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As other commenters have pointed out, this is gimmicky, shallow and clickbaity. All that they did was count from 1 to 68 billion. Any piece of digital data can
by snisarenko 7y ago
As other commenters have pointed out, this is gimmicky, shallow and clickbaity. All that they did was count from 1 to 68 billion.
Any piece of digital data can be converted to a number, and if we apply their argument then you can be "creative" by just counting numbers.
But we all know that's not true. Once the search space becomes that big, you can't actually "enjoy" any of these melodies. Because you can't listen to all of them in your lifetime, the ones that you WILL hear are going to be awful 99.999 percent of the time.
Hence, the "creative" process is navigating this search space, and figuring out which melodies are catchy. Better yet, trying to figure out how or why our brain decides to like or not like a melody.
- honestoHeminway 7y agoTrain a NN on what we like, patent only those, you mean?
- avianlyric 7y agoBut is this the entire thrust of their argument? That melodies constitute to smaller component of song to be copyrightable. Them “copyrighting” every possible melody using a purely numerical method is just a way of showing how absurd some copyrights are. They’re abusing the mechanics of the copyright system to demonstrate its flaws.
- snisarenko 7y agoSure. I've glossed over the fact that this is a legal stunt. But you can read my comment from the perspective of a devil's advocate arguing against them in court. Their argument in front of a court boils down to - "counting from 1 to 68 billion is creative effort worthy of copyright". My counter argument is that its not. And that its obviously so. I am not saying copyright law is great in it's current state. I am sure the LETTER OF THE LAW is ambiguous and ever changing for the worse (see Disney). And I am sure THE INTERPRETATION OF THE LAW has been arbitrary in a lot of court cases. BUT, if you believe in THE SPIRIT OF THE LAW - that a person can reap financial benefits for a certain period of time if they have produced something "uniquely creative". Then you should agree that this legal stunt doesn't contribute much of anything to the legal debate.
- himinlomax 7y agoI see it as a way to protest/contest some recent dodgy court decisions. I don't think they expect to actually _own_ all those melodies.
- elil17 7y agoThe creativity comes from the legal argument they make about the data.
- snisarenko 7y agoSee my comment above. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22315742 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22315742