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> I can understand how we got here, but the idea of a guitar tab being copyrighted is strange to me. It's not like you can do a "clean room implementation" of

> I can understand how we got here, but the idea of a guitar tab being copyrighted is strange to me. It's not like you can do a "clean room implementation" of a guitar tab: if you're transcribing the music accurately, the resulting tab should look indistinguishable from the copyrighted one. So how would you be able to tell whether it was infringing or not? Unfortunately transcribing music to a tab or a sheet is subject to copyright. Even transcribing the lyrics of a song is. In fact music sheets are a very lucrative business. Some sheets are also impossible to find because copyright holders refuse to re-publish them and will sue you if you try to transcribe that music yourself and publish it for free.

derefr 6y ago
This makes me wonder about the dynamics of copyright. As far as I understand it, copyright only really matters if you first create/obtain an infringing work, and then introduce said infringing work into the market somehow (by distributing it, selling it, broadcasting it, etc.) Copyright doesn’t seem to have much to say about infringing works created in private for private use, that never interact with the market. They’re infringing in theory, but in practice no copyright-holder has ever(?) gone after such infringement, because it’s just impractical to find out about it. Now imagine an ML model that, when fed audio, emits perfect tabulature corresponding to said audio—without actually being overfit enough to contain an embedding of any real tabs; and where all the training data to the model was public-domain. If an end-user of such a model applied it to a song, and what the model ended up synthesizing out was a copyrighted tab, then the end-user—and not the creator of the model—would be the one responsible for infringing upon the work, right? But, since that particular tab doesn’t exist anywhere except on their computer, then—if they just used it for practice, rather than publishing it—it’d be a private creation for private use, “invisible” to the copyright system. It seems to me that, as long as the ML model didn’t actively advertise its ability to infringe on the copyrights of these particular tabs; or guide users into doing so; then it’d be safe to sell the model (or software that embeds it), right? Even safe to sell it as fit-for-purpose for being an aid in learning/practicing music.
- TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
  Technically even making a copy of a CD for your own use counts as copyright infringement. When cars had CD players people would often make CDRs of their favourite CDs, and now people rip CDs to files. In theory all of this is illegal - because you don't buy the music with a CD, you buy a license to listen to the music from that particular run of the CD. Automated transcription - already a solved problem for solo piano and guitar, and partially solved for more complex source separation applications - would follow the same rules. So - technically an infringement, but you wouldn't be sued for private use. Sooner or later this will turn into an actual court case. Until then, the law on automated transcription is ambiguous. IANAL but I would guess it depend on whether a transcription product is sold as a "music ripper" for other people's work, or as a study aid for your own playing. And of course CD/stream ripper software has never been illegal. There have been various short-lived DRM efforts, but none of them seem to stick for long. Now it's fairly easy to rip Spotify playback, but no one seems to mind. But if you started running your own Spotify competitor they might - even on a small scale.
  - user5994461 6y ago
    You're very very wrong. Don't believe blindly everything that the music companies want you to believe. You don't buy the right to listen to a CD, you buy a copy of the CD and the music for use as you wish. Many European countries have an explicit right to private copy, you can copy/transform/archive anything you have for personal use. There is a tax on storage media that goes to the labels. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_copying_levy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_copying_levy I believe the US has something similar (you can do whatever you want with the copy that you own) but an American would be better place to comment on that. What you generally don't have (across jurisdictions) is the right to make copies and distribute them. CD rippers have never been illegal. They are illegal in a few places if they circumvent copy protection mechanisms and even there it depends on the details. You can have a look at the legal FAQ of VLC media player that debunks some of the myths. https://www.videolan.org/legal.html https://www.videolan.org/legal.html
    - deleted 6y ago
TimTheTinker 6y ago
This is why the fake books became such a thing. No band living off performance fees from local bars and restaurants is going to have the time or money to track down and pay copyright owners for the sheet music or performance fees for the songs they’re covering. It’s the most they can do to get a mechanical license for covers on albums they record—and that often would go to the producer or publisher anyway.

derefr 6y ago

This makes me wonder about the dynamics of copyright. As far as I understand it, copyright only really matters if you first create/obtain an infringing work, and then introduce said infringing work into the market somehow (by distributing it, selling it, broadcasting it, etc.) Copyright doesn’t seem to have much to say about infringing works created in private for private use, that never interact with the market. They’re infringing in theory, but in practice no copyright-holder has ever(?) gone after such infringement, because it’s just impractical to find out about it. Now imagine an ML model that, when fed audio, emits perfect tabulature corresponding to said audio—without actually being overfit enough to contain an embedding of any real tabs; and where all the training data to the model was public-domain. If an end-user of such a model applied it to a song, and what the model ended up synthesizing out was a copyrighted tab, then the end-user—and not the creator of the model—would be the one responsible for infringing upon the work, right? But, since that particular tab doesn’t exist anywhere except on their computer, then—if they just used it for practice, rather than publishing it—it’d be a private creation for private use, “invisible” to the copyright system. It seems to me that, as long as the ML model didn’t actively advertise its ability to infringe on the copyrights of these particular tabs; or guide users into doing so; then it’d be safe to sell the model (or software that embeds it), right? Even safe to sell it as fit-for-purpose for being an aid in learning/practicing music.

TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
Technically even making a copy of a CD for your own use counts as copyright infringement. When cars had CD players people would often make CDRs of their favourite CDs, and now people rip CDs to files. In theory all of this is illegal - because you don't buy the music with a CD, you buy a license to listen to the music from that particular run of the CD. Automated transcription - already a solved problem for solo piano and guitar, and partially solved for more complex source separation applications - would follow the same rules. So - technically an infringement, but you wouldn't be sued for private use. Sooner or later this will turn into an actual court case. Until then, the law on automated transcription is ambiguous. IANAL but I would guess it depend on whether a transcription product is sold as a "music ripper" for other people's work, or as a study aid for your own playing. And of course CD/stream ripper software has never been illegal. There have been various short-lived DRM efforts, but none of them seem to stick for long. Now it's fairly easy to rip Spotify playback, but no one seems to mind. But if you started running your own Spotify competitor they might - even on a small scale.
- user5994461 6y ago
  You're very very wrong. Don't believe blindly everything that the music companies want you to believe. You don't buy the right to listen to a CD, you buy a copy of the CD and the music for use as you wish. Many European countries have an explicit right to private copy, you can copy/transform/archive anything you have for personal use. There is a tax on storage media that goes to the labels. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_copying_levy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_copying_levy I believe the US has something similar (you can do whatever you want with the copy that you own) but an American would be better place to comment on that. What you generally don't have (across jurisdictions) is the right to make copies and distribute them. CD rippers have never been illegal. They are illegal in a few places if they circumvent copy protection mechanisms and even there it depends on the details. You can have a look at the legal FAQ of VLC media player that debunks some of the myths. https://www.videolan.org/legal.html https://www.videolan.org/legal.html
  - deleted 6y ago

TimTheTinker 6y ago

This is why the fake books became such a thing. No band living off performance fees from local bars and restaurants is going to have the time or money to track down and pay copyright owners for the sheet music or performance fees for the songs they’re covering. It’s the most they can do to get a mechanical license for covers on albums they record—and that often would go to the producer or publisher anyway.