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Katy Perry's Dark Horse Lawsuit Makes Waves in Music Industry

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Re: Katy Perry's Dark Horse Lawsuit Makes Waves in Music Industry

#121
post #4

I posted this the other day. Absolutely terrible, IMO. A minor artist can take millions from an artist who releases a song with a passing resemblance. You can hear similarities in SO many songs. And SO many songs are inspired by others - great art is full of inspiration. I dread where this ends up.

This sort of feels like the start of the music business's version of patent trolls. I think this verdict devalues music and hampers creativity.

My thoughts exactly and I believe its always been the goal of rights holders to get to this point.

Re: Katy Perry's Dark Horse Lawsuit Makes Waves in Music Industry

#122
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is already happening. I could be wrong but I vaguely remember something along those lines

On a similar note, a video with ten hours of static was subject to 5 copyright notices: https://www.eff.org/takedowns/ten-hours-static-gets-five-cop...

DMCA is a great success!

Re: Katy Perry's Dark Horse Lawsuit Makes Waves in Music Industry

#123

I wonder at what point similarities with past works becomes inevitable. There's only a finite amount of original music out there, especially if you're talking about the length of an average riff or motif, leave out a lot of the more extreme attempts of contemporary art music, and stick to what sounds pleasing in popular music genres. And the output of number of musical compositions seems only to be increasing. An int…

Totally inevitable.

I was listening to a recent album and the opening/closing riff of one of the songs was identical to something I used to play in my room between studying 30 years ago.

I remember my own discovery process. I had been playing the acoustic part of "Welcome Home - Sanitarium" with it's two finger chords and was messing around with similar chords higher up the neck and found a few that sounded really cool. Did I copy that song? No, but definitely inspired, the other guys probably discovered the riff in a similar way - just noodling around until they heard something they liked.

Re: Katy Perry's Dark Horse Lawsuit Makes Waves in Music Industry

#124
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

New business model: have an AI generate every chord progression in every tempo, release the "songs" on your own label, and sue everyone who releases a song after you.

Unfortunately you'd be opening yourself up to lawsuits for any of your songs that have a passing resemblance to existing songs, since after all, you've created every chord progression and tempo! Maybe if you keep a low profile and insisted on NDA's for settlements, you wouldn't get sued as much for "stealing" from every piece of music made prior to your [Mega Album] dropping. I'd also recommend getting the copyright…

Nah, just settle out of court for a percentage of the earnings of your "song". So, you get sued for one of your "songs" and they get 2.3% of your profits. Problem is that "song" has only earned you $0.000001.

Re: Katy Perry's Dark Horse Lawsuit Makes Waves in Music Industry

#125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A peer of the defendant? Because the defendant was a musician in this case.

The standard of "substantial similarity" in copyright law depends not on how an expert would see things, but on how a reasonable average person would see things. Juries are not perfect, but a jury of random people is probably the most qualified way to determine the question "would average people see these two things as substantially the same." Leonard French—a YouTuber and actual copyright attorney—does a good job co…

> a jury of random people is probably the most qualified way to determine the question "would average people see these two things as substantially the same."

A jury of random people can be confused and then convinced by lawyers. That's the way they like it, and that's the problem with jury selection - they chose people specifically because they are not knowledgeable.

Re: Katy Perry's Dark Horse Lawsuit Makes Waves in Music Industry

#126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The standard of "substantial similarity" in copyright law depends not on how an expert would see things, but on how a reasonable average person would see things. Juries are not perfect, but a jury of random people is probably the most qualified way to determine the question "would average people see these two things as substantially the same." Leonard French—a YouTuber and actual copyright attorney—does a good job co…

> a jury of random people is probably the most qualified way to determine the question "would average people see these two things as substantially the same." A jury of random people can be confused and then convinced by lawyers. That's the way they like it, and that's the problem with jury selection - they chose people specifically because they are not knowledgeable.

Whats better? Experts that can be purchased? Elected or appointed judges who owe favors to those who elected or appointed them?

Re: Katy Perry's Dark Horse Lawsuit Makes Waves in Music Industry

#127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a jury of random people is probably the most qualified way to determine the question "would average people see these two things as substantially the same." A jury of random people can be confused and then convinced by lawyers. That's the way they like it, and that's the problem with jury selection - they chose people specifically because they are not knowledgeable.

Whats better? Experts that can be purchased? Elected or appointed judges who owe favors to those who elected or appointed them?

> Whats better? [...lots of straw-men...]

To start: Not removing jurors simply because they're knowledgeable or have critical thinking skills.

Re: Katy Perry's Dark Horse Lawsuit Makes Waves in Music Industry

#128
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the repetition is super important. in modern music the rhythm is more important than the variety of tones. the same rhythm and the same tonal distance is too big to be a coincidence

How large do you think the design space is? Technically, it's enormous, maybe 8^15 possible melodies. But what about good-sounding melodies? That drastically reduces the space. What about memorable , good-sounding melodies? Most melodies aren't catchy, so that limits the space some more. What about culturally-appropriate , memorable, good-sounding melodies? It likely wouldn't make sense to use a Turkish opera melody…

the range of notes in pentatonic scale is only five. but the rhythms (the important part of modern music) have a lot more combinations. katy perry's writers used the exact same rhythm with the same notes, which is highly improbable
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