4 ms·

Who owns the copyright on procedurally generated music? Mostly curious since some of these sound better than the ambient tracks you get in games. Even better,

Who owns the copyright on procedurally generated music? Mostly curious since some of these sound better than the ambient tracks you get in games. Even better, you could constrain the parameters of the generation to have each instance of a game generate different, but thematically similar, procedural music.

FigBug 9y ago
> 503.03(a) Works-not originated by a human author. > In order to be entitled to copyright registration, a work must be the product of human authorship. Works produced by mechanical processes or random selection without any contribution by a human author are not registrable. Possibly nobody, but it depends how much input the program requires to generate the output. Just press a button and a song comes out -- can't be copyrighted. User has to enter a lot of parameters to generate output, user gets get copyright.
- WalterGR 9y ago
  Just press a button and a song comes out -- can't be copyrighted. I wonder: what would it take for a machine-generated work to be considered a work derived from a human-generated work? While the machine-generated work still wouldn't be copyrightable[0], would that prevent others from using the machine-generated work without an appropriate license? (IANAL.) [0] «To be copyrightable, a derivative work must incorporate some or all of a preexisting “work” and add new original copyrightable authorship to that work.» https://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ14.pdf https://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ14.pdf [PDF]
- somenewacc 9y ago
  > without any contribution by a human author are not registrable. Is there really no contribution of a human author -- the programmer? He wrote the source code, and supposedly imposed artistic qualities in the music that are themselves copyrightable. I agree that the user can't receive copyright since she didn't have any creative input.

FigBug 9y ago

> 503.03(a) Works-not originated by a human author. > In order to be entitled to copyright registration, a work must be the product of human authorship. Works produced by mechanical processes or random selection without any contribution by a human author are not registrable. Possibly nobody, but it depends how much input the program requires to generate the output. Just press a button and a song comes out -- can't be copyrighted. User has to enter a lot of parameters to generate output, user gets get copyright.

WalterGR 9y ago
Just press a button and a song comes out -- can't be copyrighted. I wonder: what would it take for a machine-generated work to be considered a work derived from a human-generated work? While the machine-generated work still wouldn't be copyrightable[0], would that prevent others from using the machine-generated work without an appropriate license? (IANAL.) [0] «To be copyrightable, a derivative work must incorporate some or all of a preexisting “work” and add new original copyrightable authorship to that work.» https://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ14.pdf https://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ14.pdf [PDF]
somenewacc 9y ago
> without any contribution by a human author are not registrable. Is there really no contribution of a human author -- the programmer? He wrote the source code, and supposedly imposed artistic qualities in the music that are themselves copyrightable. I agree that the user can't receive copyright since she didn't have any creative input.