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I became the world's most prolific DJ, using code

royvanrijn.com

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Re: I became the world's most prolific DJ, using code

#41

Post by viccuad »

almet wrote: post #26

This is a mathematical approach to music, and lacks (from my point of view) what is the mere essence of music : choice. I understand why they want to take back the copyright on music, but they do so in such a geeky way that it seems completely useless to me. Ultimately, musicians will pick good / cool melodies from this dataset, in the same way they do when in front of an instrument. I might be missing the point ?

I found that the TED talk linked on the article explains the issue colourfully, in case you haven't watched it.

Re: I became the world's most prolific DJ, using code

#42

Post by horsawlarway »

roywiggins wrote: post #35
horsawlarway wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You absolutely can copywrite works created via automation, you just still have to list a human as the author. Which makes a lot of sense to me - Someone had to set up the automation with the intent to create a copy writable work, and copywrite often has built in expirations based on a window of time after the death of the author. Hard to make that sane if you're listing a computer program as the author - when does it…

Even if you assign the copyright to a human and not a machine, you need a minimal amount of creativity to qualify for copyright, eg phone books can't be copyrighted. A "phone book" of every melody of a certain length is probably(?) not copyrightable either. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_Publications%2C_Inc.%2C_... .

No real disagreement from me - I'm just saying that there's absolutely nothing preventing you from using automation to create copywrite-able works.

People keep throwing that article around, and there seems to be a profound misunderstanding about what was determined there - automation is fine. Listing a machine as the author is not.

Re: I became the world's most prolific DJ, using code

#43

Post by nwsm »

The TED talk was great, though he could have used more compelling examples than George Harrison and Sam Smith. Also great was Damien's Twitter response to the author on using the de Brujin approach-

> We had initially considered a “de Bruijn” sequence. But if we were to use a single file, that would have down sides:

> If someone infringes our work, it would only be a tiny percentage (0.0000000001%?) of the “work” — so someone would argue “fair use”

> Same idea with others incorporating ATM works in theirs (“tiny percentage”)

> So our technical/legal design is “One MIDI file per melody” — which I think is a legal feature, not a bug.

Re: I became the world's most prolific DJ, using code

#44

Post by viccuad »

roywiggins wrote: post #35
horsawlarway wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You absolutely can copywrite works created via automation, you just still have to list a human as the author. Which makes a lot of sense to me - Someone had to set up the automation with the intent to create a copy writable work, and copywrite often has built in expirations based on a window of time after the death of the author. Hard to make that sane if you're listing a computer program as the author - when does it…

Even if you assign the copyright to a human and not a machine, you need a minimal amount of creativity to qualify for copyright, eg phone books can't be copyrighted. A "phone book" of every melody of a certain length is probably(?) not copyrightable either. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_Publications%2C_Inc.%2C_... .

The linked TED talk on the article explains it nicely. A phone book is created with a finite set (numbers,letters, words in English), but that finite set can be used to produce an infinite set. You can always produce a new result by appending to previous result.

In contrast, a musical melody is created by a finite set, and is bracketed by a duration. You can't keep adding more notes to a composition without extending its duration. Doing so makes it non melodic. If you do it enough, it becomes noise (white noise, pink noise..)

Re: I became the world's most prolific DJ, using code

#45

Post by wincy »

jerf wrote: post #36
eweise wrote: post #2

I'm surprised to learn that copyright doesn't take into account the length of notes, which to me is part of what makes melodies unique.

It sounds like you're assuming that they actually have any copyright on this. They don't. It's not identical but see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30702117 for some similar issue. And in general, you must be "creative" to have a copyright. You might have a "copyright" on the resulting file, but no court would ever dream of extending that to a claim of copyright on every melody. There is no way that the author…

I mean, the game No Man’s Sky procedurally generates 18 quintillion planets but they hold a copyright on all of those planets, don’t they? They certainly haven’t explored all of the planets.

Re: I became the world's most prolific DJ, using code

#47

Post by balls187 »

wincy wrote: post #45
jerf wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like you're assuming that they actually have any copyright on this. They don't. It's not identical but see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30702117 for some similar issue. And in general, you must be "creative" to have a copyright. You might have a "copyright" on the resulting file, but no court would ever dream of extending that to a claim of copyright on every melody. There is no way that the author…

I mean, the game No Man’s Sky procedurally generates 18 quintillion planets but they hold a copyright on all of those planets, don’t they? They certainly haven’t explored all of the planets.

I'm assuming you mean the US, right?

I was doing legal research on this, and funny enough there is an article that discusses this very issue: http://mttlr.org/2016/11/no-mans-skynet-copyright-in-procedu...

Re: I became the world's most prolific DJ, using code

#48

Post by marssaxman »

almet wrote: post #26

This is a mathematical approach to music, and lacks (from my point of view) what is the mere essence of music : choice. I understand why they want to take back the copyright on music, but they do so in such a geeky way that it seems completely useless to me. Ultimately, musicians will pick good / cool melodies from this dataset, in the same way they do when in front of an instrument. I might be missing the point ?

The point is that applying copyright law to music leads to absurd outcomes. It is a bad idea, and ought to be abolished.

Re: I became the world's most prolific DJ, using code

#49

Post by nwsm »

horsawlarway wrote: post #29
benabus wrote: post #12

But if you can't copyright something that was created via automation ( https://www.ipwatchdog.com/2022/02/23/thaler-loses-ai-author... ), does this even matter?

You absolutely can copywrite works created via automation, you just still have to list a human as the author. Which makes a lot of sense to me - Someone had to set up the automation with the intent to create a copy writable work, and copywrite often has built in expirations based on a window of time after the death of the author. Hard to make that sane if you're listing a computer program as the author - when does it…

I certainly agree that the author of an automation deserves credit/copyright for its output.

But imagine I build something that spits out as many binary sequences as possible. Do I then have a copyright to all the "works" that can be interpreted from it in various data formats I may have accidentally met?

This question is about intention, not authorship.

Re: I became the world's most prolific DJ, using code

#50

Post by kube-system »

benabus wrote: post #12

But if you can't copyright something that was created via automation ( https://www.ipwatchdog.com/2022/02/23/thaler-loses-ai-author... ), does this even matter?

You’re missing the point of what the court is saying.

The court is saying “the [typewriter] didn’t write the book, you wrote the book using a [typewriter]”

Replace [typewriter] with any technology.

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