4 ms·

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.