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Programmers generate every possible melody in MIDI to prevent lawsuits

musictech.net

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Re: Programmers generate every possible melody in MIDI to prevent lawsuits

#171

Post by paulddraper »

ajuc wrote: post #166
paulddraper wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> copyright lawyers want to argue originality based on an arrangement of notes in a 12 tone scale Interestingly, there are writers who want to argue originality based on the arrangement of letters in 26-letter alphabet! The world is indeed a strange place for the dogmatically logical programmer.

The whole concept of IP is absurd, and there are many absurd consequences you can derive from it. But there are degrees of absurdity, it's one thing to do that when there's 26^100000 possible combinations, it's another when there's just 12^100 (and if you only care about melody it's overestimation, most songs will use much smaller subset of that).

> just 12^100

At the risk of getting stuck in a loop: "No rhythms, no meter, no tempo, melodies are longer than 12 notes, it's diatonic, single octave, no concept of underlying harmony"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22441366

Re: Programmers generate every possible melody in MIDI to prevent lawsuits

#172

Post by [deleted] »

paulddraper wrote: post #154
Intermernet wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's definitely satire, but it's satire in the face of comical law. That's the point. If copyright lawyers want to argue originality based on an arrangement of notes in a 12 tone scale, and in a limited number of bars, then this is a completely valid argument against such a weak argument. The reality is that many number one songs can be tonally compared to many classical pieces, or even pieces from the last 40 years.…

> copyright lawyers want to argue originality based on an arrangement of notes in a 12 tone scale Interestingly, there are writers who want to argue originality based on the arrangement of letters in 26-letter alphabet! The world is indeed a strange place for the dogmatically logical programmer.

[deleted]

Re: Programmers generate every possible melody in MIDI to prevent lawsuits

#173

Post by paulddraper »

paulgb wrote: post #155
paulddraper wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alright, you made me add references :) It comes down to this: Typefaces/glyphs are not copyrightable. The font code that produces those glyphs is. > Typefaces cannot be protected by copyright in the United States (Code of Federal Regulations, Ch 37, Sec. 202.1(e); Eltra Corp. vs. Ringer)...However, there is a distinction between a font and a typeface. The machine code used to display a stylized typeface (called a fon…

Thanks for supporting your point :) I have to admit that the difference in copyrightability of fonts vs. typefaces is new to me.

Now at least the inane font-vs-typeface distinction made by modern designers has some practical distinction to it, albeit a legal one.

Re: Programmers generate every possible melody in MIDI to prevent lawsuits

#175

Post by ajuc »

paulddraper wrote: post #171
ajuc wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole concept of IP is absurd, and there are many absurd consequences you can derive from it. But there are degrees of absurdity, it's one thing to do that when there's 26^100000 possible combinations, it's another when there's just 12^100 (and if you only care about melody it's overestimation, most songs will use much smaller subset of that).

> just 12^100 At the risk of getting stuck in a loop: "No rhythms, no meter, no tempo, melodies are longer than 12 notes, it's diatonic, single octave, no concept of underlying harmony" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22441366

I was overestimating, I even mentioned it.

> and if you only care about melody it's overestimation

And they did it that way because courts don't worry about the exact tempo, meter and rhythm when ruling on plagiarism.

There was a guy trying to copyright A CHORD :)

Re: Programmers generate every possible melody in MIDI to prevent lawsuits

#176

Post by paulddraper »

ajuc wrote: post #168
jameshart wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand if you offered it up as a fact with reckless disregard for its truthfulness... Again we see programmers trying to understand the law in terms of ‘how can a piece of data be illegal?’ while the law is quite happily focusing on making specific actions illegal. ‘You can’t arrest me, gold bars aren’t illegal!’ ‘Yes, but carrying them out of the federal reserve vault without permission is.’

"I invented this later but independently" isn't a valid defense, even if you can prove it. So it's not actions (like copying or plagiarism) that is prohibited, it's the result. That's the problem with IP law. In effect you give people monopoly on numbers. When the numbers are big nobody is bothered by this, because chance of arriving at the exact same one is effectively zero. But for songs the numbers are pretty smal…

s/song/music/

i.e. sans lyrics

Re: Programmers generate every possible melody in MIDI to prevent lawsuits

#178

Post by shkkmo »

paulddraper wrote: post #170
shkkmo wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> in which case the first statement is no longer true. Why is that? What would be an example of an infinite program that could not be represented by an infinite byte sequence? Indeed, it seems trivial to map an infinite series of machine code instructions to an infinite series of bytes. Edit: It seems like the first statement is false only if you use a different understanding of "possible" for "possible byte sequence…

I internally editorialized your first statement to be "all the possible [finite] byte sequences contain all the possible programs". Because you cannot enumerate all infinite byte sequences, according to Cantor's diagonal argument as linked earlier. [1] Calling certain numerical representations "computer programs" in no way changes the fundamentals. There is no way -- no matter how clever your encoding -- to enumerate…

I am not the person you were originally responding to.

You don't have to enumerate all real numbers to create a mapping from real numbers to infinite byte sequences.

I am merely pointing out that the first statement only becomes false if you editorialize it to "all the possible [finite] byte sequences contain all the [infinite] possible programs". If you treat the meaning of "possible" consistently in that sentence, I believe it remains true regardless of whether you define infinity as possible or not.

Re: Programmers generate every possible melody in MIDI to prevent lawsuits

#179

Post by paulddraper »

phonebucket wrote: post #75
vbezhenar wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can trivially write a program which will enumerate all the possible byte sequences in the universe. So you can claim that this tiny program contains everything including god. So you can claim copyright for everything.

> You can trivially write a program which will enumerate all the possible byte sequences in the universe. So you can claim that this tiny program contains everything... Not to get too far off topic, but even an infinitely long byte sequence cannot represent all numbers. It's possible to construct something not representable by that sequence via Cantor's diagonal argument: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantor%27s_diag…

> even an infinitely long byte sequence cannot represent all [real] numbers

You misread. The previous comment said

> you can trivially write a program which will enumerate all the possible [finite] byte sequences in the universe

No one is interested in your infinitely long musical score.

Re: Programmers generate every possible melody in MIDI to prevent lawsuits

#180

Post by paulddraper »

ajuc wrote: post #175
paulddraper wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> just 12^100 At the risk of getting stuck in a loop: "No rhythms, no meter, no tempo, melodies are longer than 12 notes, it's diatonic, single octave, no concept of underlying harmony" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22441366

I was overestimating, I even mentioned it. > and if you only care about melody it's overestimation And they did it that way because courts don't worry about the exact tempo, meter and rhythm when ruling on plagiarism. There was a guy trying to copyright A CHORD :)

> exact tempo, meter and rhythm

That much is true.

> a guy trying to copyright A CHORD

IIRC he failed miserably.

A better example would be the (until recently) coprighted song "Happy Birthday." [1]

[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/happy-birthda...

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