3 ms·

> But the rules don't say anything about how long those samples are: even the tiniest sliver would have to be accounted for: you would need permission. That’s

> But the rules don't say anything about how long those samples are: even the tiniest sliver would have to be accounted for: you would need permission. That’s just silly. If no one can hear the difference then who cares? Why would it even matter what song I was getting tiny snippets from? It’s like asking a specific poet for permission to use a certain word. > Ok, so I have this little piece of software here, it allows me to extract the notes, durations and volumes of individual notes of a piano piece and then I can re-play those notes using any instrument from an enormous bank of synthesized sounds. Do you feel that this should count as original work because 'it has never existed before' or do you feel that this is a mechanical transformation and that the original creator should be able to sue me for creating a derived work? Does the mechanism of the derivation count? Does it sound like the same song or not? You know, would someone listen to it and be able to recognize the melody? That’s what matters!

jacquesm 4y ago
> If no one can hear the difference then who cares? A court, your lawyer, and then finally, you. After all, if there is no audible difference that is exactly what this would hinge on and in the age of digital music it is fairly trivial to prove that something was sampled on snippets as short as a couple of 10's of ms. Whether that amounts to infringement or not is another matter, but to prove it is not all that hard from a technical point of view. > Does it sound like the same song or not? No, because the instrument would be changed, the timing could be changed (slowed down, sped up). Even a musician would have a fairly hard time associating a piece manipulated like that with their own work. > You know, would someone listen to it and be able to recognize the melody? We could use a melody that is itself in the public domain for this (say, a piece by JS Bach played by some famous pianist). The melody may be PD but the performance definitely is not. > That’s what matters! No, what matters is whether or not it crosses the bar for being recognized as an original work, and I don't think it does. But you've got me thinking about this because I've been toying for a long time with the idea to clean up some extremely bad historical recordings of absolute masterpieces and this is one of the reasons I've been holding back from that, the copyright situation around those would be quite murky. It's 2:20 am here and I really should be getting some Z's, thank you very much for the interesting exchange, much food for thought.

jacquesm 4y ago

> If no one can hear the difference then who cares? A court, your lawyer, and then finally, you. After all, if there is no audible difference that is exactly what this would hinge on and in the age of digital music it is fairly trivial to prove that something was sampled on snippets as short as a couple of 10's of ms. Whether that amounts to infringement or not is another matter, but to prove it is not all that hard from a technical point of view. > Does it sound like the same song or not? No, because the instrument would be changed, the timing could be changed (slowed down, sped up). Even a musician would have a fairly hard time associating a piece manipulated like that with their own work. > You know, would someone listen to it and be able to recognize the melody? We could use a melody that is itself in the public domain for this (say, a piece by JS Bach played by some famous pianist). The melody may be PD but the performance definitely is not. > That’s what matters! No, what matters is whether or not it crosses the bar for being recognized as an original work, and I don't think it does. But you've got me thinking about this because I've been toying for a long time with the idea to clean up some extremely bad historical recordings of absolute masterpieces and this is one of the reasons I've been holding back from that, the copyright situation around those would be quite murky. It's 2:20 am here and I really should be getting some Z's, thank you very much for the interesting exchange, much food for thought.