9 ms·

What's wrong with copyrighting a particular concrete example of white noise? A particular string of randomly generated bits? The fact that an algorithm just he

by theoh 9y ago

What's wrong with copyrighting a particular concrete example of white noise? A particular string of randomly generated bits? The fact that an algorithm just hears generic white noise is the algorithm's problem.

abritinthebay 9y ago
> What's wrong with copyrighting a particular concrete example of white noise? It would be functionally impossible for a start. Copyright does not cover ideas and information themselves, only the form or manner in which they are expressed. Given white noise is a random signal having equal intensity at different frequencies it's basically like saying "what's wrong with copyrighting a particular number?" it is nonsensical.
- FartyMcFarter 9y ago
  > "what's wrong with copyrighting a particular number?" We do it all the time - a file on a hard drive is basically a number, and files are definitely copyrightable.
- reificator 9y ago
  When you're dealing with copyrighted files, every single one is just a very large number.
  - kbenson 9y ago
    I'll see your large number and raise you an army of monkeys on typewriters, which if I follow the pseudo-intellectual logic going on in this thread correctly, means I own the copyright of everything that will ever be created in the future. Or maybe we can all agree that just being able to describe, view, feel, smell or listen to something doesn't necessarily make it something that we can copyright or patent. We can walk back from the brink of madness towards sanity, it just takes the first few steps. :)
  - chowells 9y ago
    It's not the number that's copyrighted. It's the content that number represents that's copyrighted.
    - reificator 9y ago
      But when it's on a computer, the two are indistinguishable.
      - Pulcinella 9y ago
        A cam recording of a movie is still copyright violation even though the cinema movie and the cam recording are different numbers.
        reificator 9y ago
        > Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith. Clearly I didn't mean that the copyrighted work is only associated with a single number. The "two" in the "two are indistinguishable" was in response the the comment above: > It's not the number that's copyrighted. It's the content that number represents that's copyrighted.
      - adrianN 9y ago
        This classic essay is ever relevant http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23 http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23
      - vinceguidry 9y ago
        It's not possession that constitutes copyright violation, it's distribution. And that's up to a court of law to decide whether your actions constitute it.
  - abritinthebay 9y ago
    Right, but as - I repeat - Copyright does not cover ideas and information themselves but only the form or manner in which they are expressed then the computers information isn't the point - the expression of that information is. Which is why it is not actually in violation to have a mp3 but only to upload or play it - as that is the expression. The digital data is not actually copyrighted. Which is, again, why white noise makes no sense to copyright - it's random noise.
  - mywittyname 9y ago
    Actually, it's more like a function that maps a huge (maybe infinite) vector of very large numbers to a single concept in a human brain when interpreted in a very specific manner. Think about how many ways you can encode a single song: there are dozens of formats, each with varying bitrates and other attributes. But no matter which "number" of that song you play, a human will hear interpret them all the same.
    - reificator 9y ago
      A copyrighted work has dozens of different encodings that would map to different files. A copyrighted file is just a large number.
- brooklyn_ashey 9y ago
  pseudo random
dreamfactored 9y ago
wouldn't it have to be recognisable/distinctive to be copyrightable?
- pessimizer 9y ago
  That's only in a world where copyright was used to encourage interesting work. Instead, it's just another property right, and there's a land grab for every possible permutation of bits, or genes, or whatever. Isn't anything that can be converted into bits and compared recognizable and distinctive?
  - anigbrowl 9y ago
    No. If that was the case you could buy a vinyl record, play it a few times (such that some slight crackle developed from wear) and declare it a derivative work. If the distinction between two slightly different works (eg two white noise recordings) can't be perceived by a reasonable person (or a jury with 6-12 of them) then it doesn't exist for legal purposes. You could sit there in court with a hex editor and show how every byte of two noise files in different, but nobody procures or pays for audio recordings for the aesthetic pleasure of hex dumping them. Law isn't a competition to see whether you can figure out a way to articulate what the difference is.
dboreham 9y ago
What's wrong is that copyright doesn't work that way: "must have been created independently and contain a sufficient amount of creativity" from : https://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ33.pdf https://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ33.pdf US copyright of course, ymmv but I doubt other countries are going to be more likely to allow white noise / PN sequences.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- taneq 9y ago
  How do they define "creativity"? Because surely, a specific sample of properly random white noise would have maximum density of unique information (useful or not - but then is a song "useful"? Where's the line?)
  - wilun 9y ago
    You are confusing different things.
  - gh02t 9y ago
    It's not a precise standard, the exact boundaries of "creativity" would be left up to a judge to decide in a case where it was truly ambiguous. I'm pretty sure that this specific case would count as a minor modification to a work in the public domain, which does not qualify. https://copyright.uslegal.com/enumerated-categories-of-copyrightable-works/creativity-requirement/ https://copyright.uslegal.com/enumerated-categories-of-copyr...
    - taneq 9y ago
      Yeah, that was kind of my point. Including non-precise words in a legal document is like saying "a wizard did it".
      - xg15 9y ago
        Using deliberately undefined or "non-precise" words is a core concept in legal documents. It provides leeway and "escape hatches" where humans can decide if a law actually makes sense in a specific case. This is why we are talking about "spirit" vs "letter" of the law.
taneq 9y ago
The issue is with making a particular concrete example of white noise and then claiming that your copyright over that particular example now extends to all white noise. It'd be like John Cage claiming that, since he 'wrote' c4′33″ (consisting of 4 minutes 33 seconds of silence), any powered-off music-playing device is infringing on his copyright and must pay royalties.
- zer00eyz 9y ago
  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/rockandjazzmusic/3583315/You-cant-copyright-silence-theres-too-much-of-it-about.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/rockandjazzmusic/35... You were saying?
  - taneq 9y ago
    sigh That's what I get for assuming humanity is capable of being sensible about obvious things.
    - pimmen 9y ago
      I have low expectations of human behavior when it comes to IP. They have a chance to be exceeded in that case, and when they are, that feels good.
    - xg15 9y ago
      I agree this is pretty absurd but I could imagine that in this case the actual creative action (which I guess now can be copyrighted) might have been presenting silence as a musical score. So my guess is your turned off hi-fi system wouldn't infringe their copyright - but if you produced an audio file containing nothing but silence and marketed it as a song, you would be infringing. At least that's my try to find a spec of sanity in this. (IANAL)
      - taneq 9y ago
        So you're saying it's the difference between 0's and NaNs. I guess that makes sense.
zerostar07 9y ago
if people think there is nothing wrong with it , then the concept of IP is dangerous to society
- jordigh 9y ago
  The concept of IP is that that there is no concept of IP. Copyright is one thing and that's all that's being discussed here. Everything else that you might call "IP" is different, has different origins, works differently, and is entirely unrelated to trying to determine if someone copied another video deliberately. We're not saying that some people should be allowed to confuse consumers by trying to pass off their products as someone else's products (those are trademarks) or that people shouldn't disclose all of the details of their inventions in exchange for a short monopoly on those inventions (that's patents), or that anyone should be allowed to say that their sparkling wine was prepared in Champagne, France (that's regional designation). "IP" is a broad, vague term that describes different laws, with different purposes. Laws that are so different that it hardly makes sense to discuss them in the same breath.
  - abstrakraft 9y ago
    Ugh, this argument is tired and dumb. Thank you for bestowing upon us all the sacred knowledge that there are different kinds of IP, but we all already knew that, and choose to continue to refer to them, collectively, as IP, because they actually are similar in a lot of ways.
    - Digital-Citizen 9y ago
      No, it's informed and clearheaded. We aren't well served by conflating trademarks (which, at their best, help with consumer protection via anti-fraudulence) with copyright infringement, or patent power. The similarities are far and few between, and mostly not relevant in any discussion. The term "intellectual property" is usually used by people trying to snow someone or someone who is confused about what's going on.
      - 9y ago

by theoh 9y ago

abritinthebay 9y ago

> What's wrong with copyrighting a particular concrete example of white noise? It would be functionally impossible for a start. Copyright does not cover ideas and information themselves, only the form or manner in which they are expressed. Given white noise is a random signal having equal intensity at different frequencies it's basically like saying "what's wrong with copyrighting a particular number?" it is nonsensical.

FartyMcFarter 9y ago
> "what's wrong with copyrighting a particular number?" We do it all the time - a file on a hard drive is basically a number, and files are definitely copyrightable.
reificator 9y ago
When you're dealing with copyrighted files, every single one is just a very large number.
- kbenson 9y ago
  I'll see your large number and raise you an army of monkeys on typewriters, which if I follow the pseudo-intellectual logic going on in this thread correctly, means I own the copyright of everything that will ever be created in the future. Or maybe we can all agree that just being able to describe, view, feel, smell or listen to something doesn't necessarily make it something that we can copyright or patent. We can walk back from the brink of madness towards sanity, it just takes the first few steps. :)
- chowells 9y ago
  It's not the number that's copyrighted. It's the content that number represents that's copyrighted.
  - reificator 9y ago
    But when it's on a computer, the two are indistinguishable.
    - Pulcinella 9y ago
      A cam recording of a movie is still copyright violation even though the cinema movie and the cam recording are different numbers.
      - reificator 9y ago
        > Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith. Clearly I didn't mean that the copyrighted work is only associated with a single number. The "two" in the "two are indistinguishable" was in response the the comment above: > It's not the number that's copyrighted. It's the content that number represents that's copyrighted.
    - adrianN 9y ago
      This classic essay is ever relevant http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23 http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23
    - vinceguidry 9y ago
      It's not possession that constitutes copyright violation, it's distribution. And that's up to a court of law to decide whether your actions constitute it.
- abritinthebay 9y ago
  Right, but as - I repeat - Copyright does not cover ideas and information themselves but only the form or manner in which they are expressed then the computers information isn't the point - the expression of that information is. Which is why it is not actually in violation to have a mp3 but only to upload or play it - as that is the expression. The digital data is not actually copyrighted. Which is, again, why white noise makes no sense to copyright - it's random noise.
- mywittyname 9y ago
  Actually, it's more like a function that maps a huge (maybe infinite) vector of very large numbers to a single concept in a human brain when interpreted in a very specific manner. Think about how many ways you can encode a single song: there are dozens of formats, each with varying bitrates and other attributes. But no matter which "number" of that song you play, a human will hear interpret them all the same.
  - reificator 9y ago
    A copyrighted work has dozens of different encodings that would map to different files. A copyrighted file is just a large number.
brooklyn_ashey 9y ago
pseudo random

dreamfactored 9y ago

wouldn't it have to be recognisable/distinctive to be copyrightable?

pessimizer 9y ago
That's only in a world where copyright was used to encourage interesting work. Instead, it's just another property right, and there's a land grab for every possible permutation of bits, or genes, or whatever. Isn't anything that can be converted into bits and compared recognizable and distinctive?
- anigbrowl 9y ago
  No. If that was the case you could buy a vinyl record, play it a few times (such that some slight crackle developed from wear) and declare it a derivative work. If the distinction between two slightly different works (eg two white noise recordings) can't be perceived by a reasonable person (or a jury with 6-12 of them) then it doesn't exist for legal purposes. You could sit there in court with a hex editor and show how every byte of two noise files in different, but nobody procures or pays for audio recordings for the aesthetic pleasure of hex dumping them. Law isn't a competition to see whether you can figure out a way to articulate what the difference is.

dboreham 9y ago

What's wrong is that copyright doesn't work that way: "must have been created independently and contain a sufficient amount of creativity" from : https://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ33.pdf https://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ33.pdf US copyright of course, ymmv but I doubt other countries are going to be more likely to allow white noise / PN sequences.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
taneq 9y ago
How do they define "creativity"? Because surely, a specific sample of properly random white noise would have maximum density of unique information (useful or not - but then is a song "useful"? Where's the line?)
- wilun 9y ago
  You are confusing different things.
- gh02t 9y ago
  It's not a precise standard, the exact boundaries of "creativity" would be left up to a judge to decide in a case where it was truly ambiguous. I'm pretty sure that this specific case would count as a minor modification to a work in the public domain, which does not qualify. https://copyright.uslegal.com/enumerated-categories-of-copyrightable-works/creativity-requirement/ https://copyright.uslegal.com/enumerated-categories-of-copyr...
  - taneq 9y ago
    Yeah, that was kind of my point. Including non-precise words in a legal document is like saying "a wizard did it".
    - xg15 9y ago
      Using deliberately undefined or "non-precise" words is a core concept in legal documents. It provides leeway and "escape hatches" where humans can decide if a law actually makes sense in a specific case. This is why we are talking about "spirit" vs "letter" of the law.

taneq 9y ago

The issue is with making a particular concrete example of white noise and then claiming that your copyright over that particular example now extends to all white noise. It'd be like John Cage claiming that, since he 'wrote' c4′33″ (consisting of 4 minutes 33 seconds of silence), any powered-off music-playing device is infringing on his copyright and must pay royalties.

zer00eyz 9y ago
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/rockandjazzmusic/3583315/You-cant-copyright-silence-theres-too-much-of-it-about.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/rockandjazzmusic/35... You were saying?
- taneq 9y ago
  sigh That's what I get for assuming humanity is capable of being sensible about obvious things.
  - pimmen 9y ago
    I have low expectations of human behavior when it comes to IP. They have a chance to be exceeded in that case, and when they are, that feels good.
  - xg15 9y ago
    I agree this is pretty absurd but I could imagine that in this case the actual creative action (which I guess now can be copyrighted) might have been presenting silence as a musical score. So my guess is your turned off hi-fi system wouldn't infringe their copyright - but if you produced an audio file containing nothing but silence and marketed it as a song, you would be infringing. At least that's my try to find a spec of sanity in this. (IANAL)
    - taneq 9y ago
      So you're saying it's the difference between 0's and NaNs. I guess that makes sense.

zerostar07 9y ago

if people think there is nothing wrong with it , then the concept of IP is dangerous to society

jordigh 9y ago
The concept of IP is that that there is no concept of IP. Copyright is one thing and that's all that's being discussed here. Everything else that you might call "IP" is different, has different origins, works differently, and is entirely unrelated to trying to determine if someone copied another video deliberately. We're not saying that some people should be allowed to confuse consumers by trying to pass off their products as someone else's products (those are trademarks) or that people shouldn't disclose all of the details of their inventions in exchange for a short monopoly on those inventions (that's patents), or that anyone should be allowed to say that their sparkling wine was prepared in Champagne, France (that's regional designation). "IP" is a broad, vague term that describes different laws, with different purposes. Laws that are so different that it hardly makes sense to discuss them in the same breath.
- abstrakraft 9y ago
  Ugh, this argument is tired and dumb. Thank you for bestowing upon us all the sacred knowledge that there are different kinds of IP, but we all already knew that, and choose to continue to refer to them, collectively, as IP, because they actually are similar in a lot of ways.
  - Digital-Citizen 9y ago
    No, it's informed and clearheaded. We aren't well served by conflating trademarks (which, at their best, help with consumer protection via anti-fraudulence) with copyright infringement, or patent power. The similarities are far and few between, and mostly not relevant in any discussion. The term "intellectual property" is usually used by people trying to snow someone or someone who is confused about what's going on.
    - 9y ago