As a musician, a song writer, a sound engineer, a producer, and a recording studio owner who also has had a record label in the past, I think this is a talk that needs to be had. Money grabbing litigation is the worst thing this world has created and it has impacted the creativity and freedom of the arts. This reduces the quality of the art we can enjoy and stifles creativity, without even considering the way it can cause the creative well to dry up. We all stand on the shoulders of giants and everything we take in is an influence, there is bound to be a sign of that in any work you create in the future, and that is not a bad thing necessarily. And even if someone does copy your song, are you just passed that theirs is superior? Go out and redo it then and make it even better and use their improved version as the stepping stone to take it rob the next level, or are you not capable of doing that?
Yes, well said. All art iterates upon the past. Originality is less important than authenticity. If copyright is (arguably) meant to encourage art proliferation, then the copyright laws should align with that goal.
Shoulders of Giants originates from when Newton stole all Robert Hooke's work and took the credit- he used it as a slight since Hooke was a hunchback due to, ya know, actually using a microscope
That's all well and good until you find out some millionaire took your stuff and made a lot of money without credit/royalties to you. Of course, they will never admit to it. Then when you try to take their stuff, they copyright claim your azz!
When I was younger I always wondered if there was a limit on how much music humans can create. This is def one of the more interesting TED talks on here
you don't actually need to generate every single melody. just enough to disrupt creative liberty. i admit the number would still be very large, but any disruption by a big player (maybe Amazon) would be catastrophic.
@@chuheihkg "We will NEVER know the exact amount with 12 notes." So I have some news for you: If we restrict ourselves to one octave (8 different notes), the exact amount is 429981696. (About 430 million) If we count every key on a piano as a note (so that's 88 possible notes), the exact amount is 92885869784266333550318482747592186663612968312311404275495006694290687472567021380958888656896. Or, in English, just under 92 trigintillion.
it is infinite in many ways. just think about the computation about rhythmic values in a melodie, which is the absolute part of a song... this guy is not a composer... just fiddling with computer algoritms.
No, that's bs people with no actual knowledge of music like to say to sound smart. It's the same as with language. When writing prose, can you unwittingly replicate a sentence someone else used, or a whole plot, the protagonist, or maybe the title? Sure, but that doesn't mean you can't write anything original at all. Plus context is key. Same goes for melody. Composers or producers can arrange/orchestrate the same melody in so many different ways that the casual listener wouldn't probably tell it's the same thing. The possibilities are close to infinite.
He should upload recordings of all the music to UA-cam, see if he gets hit by any of the big companies, then sue them when they try to take away his rights.
Wouldnt it be the same thing, but the other way around. Those big companies actually do have the copyright to the song, so the randomly generated melody has already been copyrighted.
@@dubliostower That's a can of worms a record label won't open: If they sue Damien for copyright infringement, win or lose, Damien can now sue them for every single song they'll ever release - and use the record label's own testimony against them.
Fascinating talk, Mr. Riehl! You are effectively showing that a basic melody should not be a basis for a lawsuit. Copyright law in the United States seriously needs reform. I am looking forward to hearing how this holds up in court!
@@christopermitchell5019 That HAS been the conventional wisdom, however, recently, it has started happening & people have WON! Rick Beato has some good videos on this subject referencing some recent cases. Look up the Katy Perry case as one example.
They already did release it on their website, along with all the code for the generation algorithm. It's all open source too. Looking at the files right now.
Imagine that Frederic Chopin or Mozart could've hypothetically played the melody from Linkin Park- In the End, or any other contemporary melody when playing piano, just by accident or something. It's entirely possible. Mindblowing.
I'm just making a stab at this, but classical and romantic music is far more complex than a pop song's structure. A Mozart melody might take up, for example, 30 notes. Beethoven's Fifth, everyone can hum the first four notes, followed by the next four notes, but how many notes follow that? Good luck counting lol. But for the record, classical composers often plagiarized themselves (Bach was notorious) and even Rachmaninoff apparently subconsciously rewrote a church piece he'd heard as a child much later in his life... but this to me is more remarkable than anything to be frightened by.
This is a big step for the future continuation of music! It is universal and should be in the public domain. Very good work! Music is life and I think without music (singing) there would be no life, but just existence. Not to disrespect the song witers that already filed copyright law suits, but it just might be that in the (at least) 5000 years of human society even their songs have been sung before. The same goes for rhythms from old tribes. They might not have been recorded, but one might have heard one of them. And what about sounds (frequencies) and rhythmes that float around in space (chemical and physics), those are there since... Maybe far fetched, but in reasoning it just might be helpful.
Regardless, thanks for fighting back against a broken copyright system. It's important work and a good workaround until we can get more meaningful reform. I just was surprised to see such a quiet video on youtube. It is, by far, the quietest one I've ever encountered since I started checking the stats widget a couple years ago. Previously, the quietest one was -15 dB.
They have all the melodies of the chromatic scale but not all that could exist. By definition: "A melody is a combination of pitch and rhythm". If they really want all the melodies that could exist there are so much other variables to consider than the 7 main musical notes to care about in the algorithm. What about microtones? What if I use a microtone as the reference note on my tunning? (Like we use A on 440hz). This leds us even more frequencies and tone variables because at the end the 7 main musical notes are just a standar name of certain frequencies. (like A=440hz) If we think more deeply the fact that the commonly stated range of human hearing is 20 Hz to 20 kHz and that the chromatic scale only uses 12 specific frequencies for each note if this range we have the remaining frequiencies that could represent the pitch of a note, not a standard one, but by definition (pitch). Quote: "In all technicality, music can be composed of notes at any arbitrary physical frequency." But of course, I get the point of the video and this "notes" are not of common use in music, neither classical, Pop or "commercial music" that is more suceptible of this kind of sues, but saying that they have "all the melodies" without touching this topic is kinda pretentious. (and this is only the pitch part).
Although I completely agree with everything he did and he criticised about copyright infringement laws, I don't like that he got the minor scale wrong, acted like all notes have the same length in every melody and all melodies are about the same length. Although he probably willfully simplified that for the talk, the number of *all* possible melodies would be significantly higher and you wouldn't be able to display it on such a kind of sheet.
Yes, I was limited by both (1) time and (2) audience sophistication. I had to make three technical, arcane topics, making them interesting to laypersons. I could talk with experts for hours. Rhythm doesn't really matter that much. Cover a song - but vary the rhythm - and it's still a copy. On total universe of melodies: it's hypothetically true. But how many melodies are outside of my dataset? Particularly if you stitch together 2 or more of my 12-tone melodies?
That was excellent thank you for your work! Yet; I was wondering considering there are more tonal systems than equal temperament of western music with only 12 distinctive tones. The number of permutations of melodies is also infinite, like a paintings number of brush stokes, if we include any tonal system that is existing or when imagining any derivative. One could make up any custome scale in cents or hertz; making the number of notes infinit..? Of course this is more theoretical and might miss any practical application to the real world! Keep making music!
Yes, you're absolutely right: We're covering the vast majority of songs that are litigated. The odds of a non-western temperament (e.g., 24-tone) getting sued over is tiny. It'll probably never happen. So we're covering the primary use cases: Major, Minor, 12-tone. Thanks for your note!
I'm curious why intonation and tuning- 1/4 tones, various Hz- aren't part of any argument/discussion. The Pythagorean 12 tone system isn't the only system to exist.
they aim at addressing only pop music because this is the primary field of copyright lawsuits, very few people write in penthatonic or Indian or Arabic scales in the West and very few of those types of melodies or scales are used in pop music
BayanTheOne is right: One could include 1/4 tones. It's just math. But let's count the number of copyright lawsuits that involve 1/4 tones. Is the number greater than zero? If not, then is the juice worth the squeeze?
Shouldn't the law read "anyone can use any melody, as long as you do not infringe upon another artists right to make money from their work." I'm not a lawyer, so I can't right this in legal speak... You can argue that a melody is math, and since you can't copyright an equation, you can't copyright a melody!
SUPER! I like that step! But for practicality - could someone consider uploading them to UA-cam & mark them as Creative Commons so that noone will be able to get copyright clammed again?
I've been working as a songwriter for 30 years in the Latin Market. I have 256 recorded and released songs, of course copyrighted some of them controlled by Warner Chappell, Some Pier Music and others Universal music Publishing. If I understand what he is saying is that he copyrighted all possible note combinations and put them on public domain? Which of course would include my entire 256 recorded songs catalogue along with my thousands of non recorded songs. Well if my songs were registered before he did that, then I don't think he has the right to put them on public domain not with my songs not with anyone else's songs previously registered. Im sorry but You can't put in public domain what you don't own. Besides I don't think this guy is trying to protect or liberate songwriters or composers in fact I think he is trying to take away copyrights from them. The ability to make money with your creation overtime. Next step would be make composers to work for a 1 time buy out work for hire fee and force them to give up their songwriting royalties. Which that is already going on. Media Networks are trying to force composers and songwriters to give up royalties. I wouldn't be surprised if those guys are behind this.
don't mind me, i'm just waiting for the day that damien riehl gets copyrighted by all of the beatles melodies that are in that terabyte drive. that will be the most interesting and most expensive thing to come out of this.
It's time to repeal copyright laws that protect ownership of the "components" of music and limit copyright protections to complete finished productions. Thus chords, rhythms, melodies would be removed from copyright protection.
Rythms and chords have never been copyrighted. It has aways been said nobody can own a set of chords. They realised that long time ago. It is to limited.
If anyone has any suggestions for additional sources on music copyright, shoot them my way. I'm working on a term paper for my media law class. We recently watched 'Rip! A Remixer's Manifesto' (the "first open-source documentary - very cool, 10/10 would recommend) and it's got me fascinated in copyright. It's really cool to see stuff like this happening. A re-assessment of our approach to intellectual property law is long overdue.
This is brilliant work. You know… when you copyright a song, there should be a process that determines if it even qualifies considering the current system in place. Otherwise l, what’s the point if this can still happen. Sickening.
anyone pop music composer that sues another composer over just the melody is completely out of their gords, if they think no one in history has never compsed the same melody before, that opens a precedent such that everyone that composes a song and copyright it, is just going to hunt for music that sounds the same for them to sue over "their" melody, this is pure chaos we are heading to, i really REALLY hope these guys iniciative actually do protect composers
Looks like their oversimplified definition of melody is just a sequence notes without any timing information. For example, 1_2_3 is not the same as 1___2_3, or 1_____2____3. However they are the same "melody". Number of melodies isn't so finite anymore when you consider spaces between notes.
How to infringe pop lyrics: use "come back", "don't leave me", "sit on my d", "baby", "you're my everything", "have a good time", "8-string", "drove my van" or a combination of those lines
Totally agree with copyright law being outdated. One thing though: 4:05 This statement is very reductive of music to only one 7-note scale of Western music...
@@malahamavet he wasn't trying to be a troll and copyright everything for his own purposes, he was trying to make a point that people shouldn't be sued for making melodies that other people have made because he's made all of them.
when i was younger i used to discard any melody that sounded too familiar. i felt i must have accidently copied something but i didn't know which song. Nowadays i don't make a lot of music any more but i don't discard good melodies any more because the final song is what matters and not just a melody or baseline or drums
How about we finally change the laws? Intellectual property has been problematic since the very beginning, and with a globalised connected world it's not likely to get any less so unless we fundamentally change the laws and how we perceive the issue.
Me and my friend were discussing music written by AI just before Christmas and this was one of the things we discussed if it would basically be legally held up in a court of law if you just used a computer to write every melody in existence and then use it to sue everyone for copyright infringement for the rest of time.
I have a question, how do you prevent bad people that uses your software from copyrighting melodies to use for sueing other people? someone could just copyright a lot of sounds that wasn't done yet like one octave lower or higher and sueing all people that uses it to get money... besides that this project is so amazing I really love it. keep going expanding the algorithm to "free" more sounds from the music industry
And how do they prove that the composer intentionally copied the melody from another composer? it's impossible to prove. It turns out that the copyright holders have raked in all the music and are taking tribute for it. Then they launch these sounds through the media, loudspeakers, etc., saturating the brain of the newly-born composer...
How about Cadence and BBP… the infinitely variable potential length of each note. That can change a melody drastically. Is any given melody, the same melody regardless of note length?
Yeah they’ve left out rhythm which is the most crucial aspect of melody imo. Because of rhythm it is practically impossible to come up with an existing vocal melody. On instruments it isn’t that simple though. Standard time signatures and note lengths are used there.
Yeah and "8 notes". He forgot the flats/sharps and if he included 2 C-notes, why not 2 D-notes and so on? Since it makes a huge difference if you are using more than just one octave...
Agh God my brain hurts from the idiocy. Computers are only so powerful. Putting a song in a different key is still considered a variant of that song and is thus copyrightable. It's _good enough_ to fall under "all melodies" in the eyes of copyright.
I'm struggling with this right now. I made a song several years ago with plans to use it as the main theme of a video game. I posted it to the internet, and it got a couple hundred views. Now, a new game coming out this year, the sequel to a very popular franchise, is using the same exact melody. So, I am almost positive that they never heard my song before. What I'm scared of is getting myself sued for using the same melody in a game.
You don't have to worry about that. Because if you wrote before hearing it from the other game. You already have the proof in your computer. When you first record it or program it. Your computer marks the dat as you probably already know. Therefore you have the date. If the date is prior for their creation they don't have anything on you. Cased close. Won't go any further.
If you are in the United States, you already have established copyright for the song. It is the newcomer that is infringing on your rights. They would lose any action in court against you if it went that far. You may wish to consider preserving the evidence of your own work, submit it for a copyright registration (currently about a $55 fee), and start crowdfunding for the legal fees to cover the lawsuit you will be starting.
@@misterlyle. Thanks for the advice. Although, in this particular situation I couldn't bring myself to sue, as my own project gets closer to fruition I will have to prepare for a proper response in case I am sent a cease-and-desist. I don't really know enough about how these things actually play out to know exactly what I need, but I will be able to get in touch with a lawyer for advice if it comes to that.
10:54 - No, that won't happen. Even if they keep just 12 notes, and only 88 keys/notes on a standard piano, that would create over 216 _sextillion_ melodies which at even just a single byte per melody would take up over 186 _zettabytes_ which you definitely could not store on a hard-drive to make it count as automatically copyrighted, forget about 100 notes. The most you could do would be to write down a _description_ of the melodies instead of the melodies themselves, which doesn't count.
While there are 88 keys on some keyboards, those are not all separate notes. It doesn't matter if you play a song in B flat or A minor, the notes are the same for a melody. There are only 12 actually notes weather you have a keyboard with 12 keys or 1200.
Also the octave does not matter. A melody doesn't change because I shifted up/down an octave or so. That limits the song space by a lot. The real number eater is when you have long melodies. But a melody is rarely more than 1 dozen or so notes long and even at twice that length, it can be set to copyrightable form. You may not be able to cover them all, but you can cover most of the useful ones.
There is no copyright on words like "Hey" "a" "sad" "Jude" "don't" "bad" "take" "song" "make" "it" "better". But if you take that and put it into order there clearly is infringement there. Same should go for music. Small 4-12 note sections shouldn't be looked at under the microscope, but more in musical context of the whole composition.
melodies and notes are like paint it's limited, while words and melodies are like a canvas it also means someone can own all the songs if they can buy the melodies
Ok but what if a melody so simple and basic contracts to other songs, possibly hundreads and just cancel each other out? Like a bassline or a drum melody?
The idea behind this is great, and I support it. But there are a few points that even as amateur musician make me feel irritated: a) 8 tones? Just leaving out other tonal systems, chromatic scales have 12 notes per octave... b) Hitting the same note on different octaves is a big difference, if I go up by 5 or down by 3 is definitely not the same. c) Although you can play the same melody faster or slower, there's still different rhythm and breaks possible Its absolutely not the same if I hold the note twice as long as the next, and the following again as long as the first, or just play all 3 the same length. "A melody (from Greek μελῳδία, melōidía, "singing, chanting"),[1] also tune, voice, or line, is a linear succession of musical tones that the listener perceives as a single entity. In its most literal sense, a melody is a combination of pitch and rhythm, while more figuratively, the term can include successions of other musical elements such as tonal color." (from wikipedia) Just following this definition you could find even more problems.
In the litany of copyright infringement lawsuits, technology lawyer and musician Damien Riehl demonstrates that music is merely math, and has a finite number of possible melodies. If you’ve ever thought a song you like sounded similar to another, the culprit may not be an unethical forger, but rather the limited mathematical musical equations that our favorite artists have to work with. Current copyright law is at risk of severely limiting future music creation and future human creativity. This talk suggests a new way to handle these legal cases. Damien Riehl is a technology lawyer with a B.S. in music. After beginning to code in 1985, and for the web in 1995, he has worked for the chief judges of state and federal courts; litigated for a decade; taught law-school copyright classes; and led teams in software development, digital forensics, proactive cybersecurity, reactive cybersecurity incidents, and world-scale investigations. Damien’s combined experience in the law, technology, and music has inspired his most recent project-copyrighting billions of unique melodies. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community.
This is sort of true. But if you consider the timbre and rhythms, time and key signatures it becomes much more analogous to written works. Although the number of available word combinations is huge, it is still finite. Music is a creative work that could be maliciously copied. But copyright law is vague, ambiguous, and subject to rampant abuse - it does need to be changed. With the explosion of created content, copyright law in its current form is untenable. There should be at the least be a requirement that the creator had a clear act of copying which in turn should be a high bar, with innocence until proven guilty. This should also apply to written works and other forms intellectual property.
![[UA] Eternal Fire проти NAVI | EPL Season 20 Malta](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/chvlsDygrZM/mqdefault.jpg)
Adam Neely sent me on a mission.
69th like!
Same, brother!
PREACH!
I've come to do my part
Same here!
I heard him use several sentences that have been used before by other people.
Which ones?
I'm calling my verbal lawyer now, maybe he's used copy right verbal material.
@@ZefParisoto too late, I've filed the lawsuit already.
not only have i copyrighted all sentences, all sentience & all maladies .. i've also copyrighted all spelling mystics too
And not a single word with which I was not familiar. Hmm...
As a musician, a song writer, a sound engineer, a producer, and a recording studio owner who also has had a record label in the past, I think this is a talk that needs to be had. Money grabbing litigation is the worst thing this world has created and it has impacted the creativity and freedom of the arts. This reduces the quality of the art we can enjoy and stifles creativity, without even considering the way it can cause the creative well to dry up. We all stand on the shoulders of giants and everything we take in is an influence, there is bound to be a sign of that in any work you create in the future, and that is not a bad thing necessarily. And even if someone does copy your song, are you just passed that theirs is superior? Go out and redo it then and make it even better and use their improved version as the stepping stone to take it rob the next level, or are you not capable of doing that?
Yes, well said. All art iterates upon the past. Originality is less important than authenticity. If copyright is (arguably) meant to encourage art proliferation, then the copyright laws should align with that goal.
Shoulders of Giants originates from when Newton stole all Robert Hooke's work and took the credit- he used it as a slight since Hooke was a hunchback due to, ya know, actually using a microscope
That's all well and good until you find out some millionaire took your stuff and made a lot of money without credit/royalties to you. Of course, they will never admit to it. Then when you try to take their stuff, they copyright claim your azz!
@Windows XP Professional Service Pack 2 It's Creators Life + 95 years or so.
Dope
When I was younger I always wondered if there was a limit on how much music humans can create. This is def one of the more interesting TED talks on here
the combination is very big. We will NEVER know the exact amount with 12 notes.
you don't actually need to generate every single melody. just enough to disrupt creative liberty. i admit the number would still be very large, but any disruption by a big player (maybe Amazon) would be catastrophic.
@@chuheihkg "We will NEVER know the exact amount with 12 notes."
So I have some news for you:
If we restrict ourselves to one octave (8 different notes), the exact amount is 429981696. (About 430 million)
If we count every key on a piano as a note (so that's 88 possible notes), the exact amount is 92885869784266333550318482747592186663612968312311404275495006694290687472567021380958888656896.
Or, in English, just under 92 trigintillion.
it is infinite in many ways. just think about the computation about rhythmic values in a melodie, which is the absolute part of a song... this guy is not a composer... just fiddling with computer algoritms.
No, that's bs people with no actual knowledge of music like to say to sound smart. It's the same as with language. When writing prose, can you unwittingly replicate a sentence someone else used, or a whole plot, the protagonist, or maybe the title? Sure, but that doesn't mean you can't write anything original at all. Plus context is key. Same goes for melody. Composers or producers can arrange/orchestrate the same melody in so many different ways that the casual listener wouldn't probably tell it's the same thing. The possibilities are close to infinite.
He should upload recordings of all the music to UA-cam, see if he gets hit by any of the big companies, then sue them when they try to take away his rights.
Wouldnt it be the same thing, but the other way around. Those big companies actually do have the copyright to the song, so the randomly generated melody has already been copyrighted.
well supposing the a. I. could know the copyrighted songs, you could upload only the public ones
@@dubliostower Actually they can prove that they neither used other songs to write it NOR wrote subconsciously xD
@@dubliostower That's a can of worms a record label won't open: If they sue Damien for copyright infringement, win or lose, Damien can now sue them for every single song they'll ever release - and use the record label's own testimony against them.
++
Fascinating talk, Mr. Riehl! You are effectively showing that a basic melody should not be a basis for a lawsuit. Copyright law in the United States seriously needs reform. I am looking forward to hearing how this holds up in court!
Unfortunately, people are now suing over chord progressions and if a song just SOUNDS stylistically similar.
chord progressions and rhythms cant be sued over. only melody.
@@christopermitchell5019 That HAS been the conventional wisdom, however, recently, it has started happening & people have WON! Rick Beato has some good videos on this subject referencing some recent cases. Look up the Katy Perry case as one example.
@@Milewskige The Katy Perry one was a melody
@@burningflower1 Watch the Rick Beato video
I'm just commenting this for the sake of this getting recognized by the algorithm.
*Microtonality walks away quietly, hoping not to be seen*
If you can show me one instance of microtonality-usage in a mainstream pop-setting I will absolutely acquire and digest a hat
@@sweetwheatsy king gizzard and the lizard wizard
@@sweetwheatsy Marty Friedman?
@@AUBCodeII Oooh, who's that and what fitting track can you recommend?
@@sweetwheatsy
The West doesn't know about the existence of Microtones
The copyright of every single melody is in good hands it seems❤️😇
If he releases his melodies on that drive, he will be sued by everyone, even Vanilla Ice for copyright infringement.
They already did release it on their website, along with all the code for the generation algorithm. It's all open source too. Looking at the files right now.
The hero musicians have been waiting for....tired of reading copyright lawsuits.
Yes! We're getting Closer and Closer to reaching 300 000!
If we don't work together, we may never reach 3 000 000!
Copyright laws need a rework, thats for sure
absolutely
Law won't cut it. Society is insane. Work needs to be done on that level.
Not the hero we deserved, but the hero we needed.
Dude is a legend in music already, thank you and I dont even write music that much.
Imagine that Frederic Chopin or Mozart could've hypothetically played the melody from Linkin Park- In the End, or any other contemporary melody when playing piano, just by accident or something. It's entirely possible. Mindblowing.
I'm just making a stab at this, but classical and romantic music is far more complex than a pop song's structure. A Mozart melody might take up, for example, 30 notes. Beethoven's Fifth, everyone can hum the first four notes, followed by the next four notes, but how many notes follow that? Good luck counting lol. But for the record, classical composers often plagiarized themselves (Bach was notorious) and even Rachmaninoff apparently subconsciously rewrote a church piece he'd heard as a child much later in his life... but this to me is more remarkable than anything to be frightened by.
This is a big step for the future continuation of music!
It is universal and should be in the public domain. Very good work!
Music is life and I think without music (singing) there would be no life, but just existence.
Not to disrespect the song witers that already filed copyright law suits, but it just might be that in the (at least) 5000 years of human society even their songs have been sung before. The same goes for rhythms from old tribes. They might not have been recorded, but one might have heard one of them.
And what about sounds (frequencies) and rhythmes that float around in space (chemical and physics), those are there since...
Maybe far fetched, but in reasoning it just might be helpful.
An author named Spider Robinson wrote a short story, Melancholy Elephants, warning of exactly this problem. It was published in 1982.
Hmmm for some reason the audio on this is pretty low for me, you should turn it up on the video because THIS MAN NEEDS TO BE HEARD!
Right-click -> stats for nerds -> content loudness: -24 dB :(
Had to turn this video waaaaay up to hear it, and even then, it's really quiet.
Regardless, thanks for fighting back against a broken copyright system. It's important work and a good workaround until we can get more meaningful reform. I just was surprised to see such a quiet video on youtube. It is, by far, the quietest one I've ever encountered since I started checking the stats widget a couple years ago. Previously, the quietest one was -15 dB.
They have all the melodies of the chromatic scale but not all that could exist.
By definition:
"A melody is a combination of pitch and rhythm".
If they really want all the melodies that could exist there are so much other variables to consider than the 7 main musical notes to care about in the algorithm.
What about microtones?
What if I use a microtone as the reference note on my tunning? (Like we use A on 440hz).
This leds us even more frequencies and tone variables because at the end the 7 main musical notes are just a standar name of certain frequencies.
(like A=440hz)
If we think more deeply the fact that the commonly stated range of human hearing is 20 Hz to 20 kHz and that the chromatic scale only uses 12 specific frequencies for each note if this range
we have the remaining frequiencies that could represent the pitch of a note, not a standard one, but by definition (pitch).
Quote:
"In all technicality, music can be composed of notes at any arbitrary physical frequency."
But of course, I get the point of the video and this "notes" are not of common use in music, neither classical, Pop or "commercial music" that is more suceptible of this kind of sues, but saying that they have "all the melodies" without touching this topic is kinda pretentious.
(and this is only the pitch part).
Best and the most crucial music related video on the internet 🙏
Seems like copyright law for protecting songwriting is becoming a threat now rather than actually protecting songwriters.
Okay, I just got to the bit where he says they've expanded to 12 notes (the full chromatic scale) good. Otherwise it's all a waste of time.
Although I completely agree with everything he did and he criticised about copyright infringement laws, I don't like that he got the minor scale wrong, acted like all notes have the same length in every melody and all melodies are about the same length. Although he probably willfully simplified that for the talk, the number of *all* possible melodies would be significantly higher and you wouldn't be able to display it on such a kind of sheet.
Yes, I was limited by both (1) time and (2) audience sophistication. I had to make three technical, arcane topics, making them interesting to laypersons. I could talk with experts for hours.
Rhythm doesn't really matter that much. Cover a song - but vary the rhythm - and it's still a copy.
On total universe of melodies: it's hypothetically true. But how many melodies are outside of my dataset? Particularly if you stitch together 2 or more of my 12-tone melodies?
@@DamienRiehl basicly Bach owns all music with his wtc books
That was excellent thank you for your work! Yet; I was wondering considering there are more tonal systems than equal temperament of western music with only 12 distinctive tones. The number of permutations of melodies is also infinite, like a paintings number of brush stokes, if we include any tonal system that is existing or when imagining any derivative. One could make up any custome scale in cents or hertz; making the number of notes infinit..? Of course this is more theoretical and might miss any practical application to the real world!
Keep making music!
Yes, you're absolutely right: We're covering the vast majority of songs that are litigated. The odds of a non-western temperament (e.g., 24-tone) getting sued over is tiny. It'll probably never happen. So we're covering the primary use cases: Major, Minor, 12-tone. Thanks for your note!
Down with greedy lawyer's and corporations that inhibit innovation, and let get this Renaissance started!
17:48
No, We thank you Sir.😉👍
Good job guys thank you for your service
Leaving this comment for the algo because every musician needs to watch this video
Mathematicians and programmers can copyright the formula/code to generate all melodies, etc.
Keep on Pushing!
I dont know Adam Neely ... but I watched his video and here I am.
Lets get to 3 Million :)
I'm curious why intonation and tuning- 1/4 tones, various Hz- aren't part of any argument/discussion. The Pythagorean 12 tone system isn't the only system to exist.
they aim at addressing only pop music because this is the primary field of copyright lawsuits, very few people write in penthatonic or Indian or Arabic scales in the West and very few of those types of melodies or scales are used in pop music
BayanTheOne is right: One could include 1/4 tones. It's just math. But let's count the number of copyright lawsuits that involve 1/4 tones. Is the number greater than zero? If not, then is the juice worth the squeeze?
Shouldn't the law read "anyone can use any melody, as long as you do not infringe upon another artists right to make money from their work." I'm not a lawyer, so I can't right this in legal speak... You can argue that a melody is math, and since you can't copyright an equation, you can't copyright a melody!
That's a gamechanger.
SUPER! I like that step! But for practicality - could someone consider uploading them to UA-cam & mark them as Creative Commons so that noone will be able to get copyright clammed again?
I don't believe anything in nature is copyright or encrypted
Most likely because you've never came up with anything worth keeping
@@ShadowLady1 you are greedy
@@MiyamotoMusakaki World runs on money,hate to break it to you
@@ShadowLady1 greedy sad beings your people truly are, you bring nothing to the world only take, take, take.
@@MiyamotoMusakaki My people? What do you mean by that?
I've been working as a songwriter for 30 years in the Latin Market. I have 256 recorded and released songs, of course copyrighted some of them controlled by Warner Chappell, Some Pier Music and others Universal music Publishing. If I understand what he is saying is that he copyrighted all possible note combinations and put them on public domain? Which of course would include my entire 256 recorded songs catalogue along with my thousands of non recorded songs. Well if my songs were registered before he did that, then I don't think he has the right to put them on public domain not with my songs not with anyone else's songs previously registered. Im sorry but You can't put in public domain what you don't own. Besides I don't think this guy is trying to protect or liberate songwriters or composers in fact I think he is trying to take away copyrights from them. The ability to make money with your creation overtime. Next step would be make composers to work for a 1 time buy out work for hire fee and force them to give up their songwriting royalties. Which that is already going on. Media Networks are trying to force composers and songwriters to give up royalties. I wouldn't be surprised if those guys are behind this.
I agree. And as a songwriter I find it both scary and depressing
Musicians needed our very own Elon Musk, this is the closest we ever came, I'm pretty grateful for that
This guy is even cooler than Elon Musk IMHO
More people honestly need to watch this
don't mind me, i'm just waiting for the day that damien riehl gets copyrighted by all of the beatles melodies that are in that terabyte drive. that will be the most interesting and most expensive thing to come out of this.
It's time to repeal copyright laws that protect ownership of the "components" of music and limit copyright protections to complete finished productions. Thus chords, rhythms, melodies would be removed from copyright protection.
Rythms and chords have never been copyrighted. It has aways been said nobody can own a set of chords. They realised that long time ago. It is to limited.
@@Atlas65 Except when chords are arpeggiated (ala Stairway To Heaven)
This guy is outstanding. Changing the world with a clever idea.
This is why copyright and "plagiarism" are utter bullshits, especially when it comes to music.
If anyone has any suggestions for additional sources on music copyright, shoot them my way. I'm working on a term paper for my media law class.
We recently watched 'Rip! A Remixer's Manifesto' (the "first open-source documentary - very cool, 10/10 would recommend) and it's got me fascinated in copyright.
It's really cool to see stuff like this happening. A re-assessment of our approach to intellectual property law is long overdue.
Copyright saves just as many people as it takes down. Copyright laws are so outdated and should really see major changes sooner than later.
Adam Neely brought me here!
Me too! 😁
Me 3 😁
This is brilliant work. You know… when you copyright a song, there should be a process that determines if it even qualifies considering the current system in place. Otherwise l, what’s the point if this can still happen. Sickening.
Support the access!
anyone pop music composer that sues another composer over just the melody is completely out of their gords, if they think no one in history has never compsed the same melody before, that opens a precedent such that everyone that composes a song and copyright it, is just going to hunt for music that sounds the same for them to sue over "their" melody, this is pure chaos we are heading to, i really REALLY hope these guys iniciative actually do protect composers
Looks like their oversimplified definition of melody is just a sequence notes without any timing information. For example, 1_2_3 is not the same as 1___2_3, or 1_____2____3. However they are the same "melody". Number of melodies isn't so finite anymore when you consider spaces between notes.
How to infringe pop lyrics:
use "come back", "don't leave me", "sit on my d", "baby", "you're my everything", "have a good time", "8-string", "drove my van" or a combination of those lines
How about pronouncing "me" as "may?
This comment is going to be taken down for copyright reasons
"tonight is the night"
"walking down the street"
@@MelvynHaas and we only have tonight
Totally agree with copyright law being outdated. One thing though:
4:05 This statement is very reductive of music to only one 7-note scale of Western music...
No joke I'm his son
Cool dad
Then are you of public domain too? Or are you copyrighted by him as your author?
Wish I had a dad like yours lol.
@@malahamavet he wasn't trying to be a troll and copyright everything for his own purposes, he was trying to make a point that people shouldn't be sued for making melodies that other people have made because he's made all of them.
@@aidanriehl9037 yes, yes, I know 😁 I was just joking haha. I really think this is great
I'm surprised there's no Content ID claim on this video, nice job UA-cam
You stated "Accidental"; I think you meant "Coincidental".
when i was younger i used to discard any melody that sounded too familiar. i felt i must have accidently copied something but i didn't know which song. Nowadays i don't make a lot of music any more but i don't discard good melodies any more because the final song is what matters and not just a melody or baseline or drums
How about we finally change the laws?
Intellectual property has been problematic since the very beginning, and with a globalised connected world it's not likely to get any less so unless we fundamentally change the laws and how we perceive the issue.
that's the only correct approach
musicians should lobby the cause with politicians
Just tickeling the algorithm.
Me and my friend were discussing music written by AI just before Christmas and this was one of the things we discussed if it would basically be legally held up in a court of law if you just used a computer to write every melody in existence and then use it to sue everyone for copyright infringement for the rest of time.
Bravo, Damien!
I have a question, how do you prevent bad people that uses your software from copyrighting melodies to use for sueing other people?
someone could just copyright a lot of sounds that wasn't done yet like one octave lower or higher and sueing all people that uses it to get money...
besides that this project is so amazing I really love it. keep going expanding the algorithm to "free" more sounds from the music industry
I actually think that having the patent to AI melody generation would be more effective in winning court cases
In the US, patent protection lasts about fourteen years. Copyright last much longer currently.
Let's get this to 3M views
And how do they prove that the composer intentionally copied the melody from another composer? it's impossible to prove. It turns out that the copyright holders have raked in all the music and are taking tribute for it. Then they launch these sounds through the media, loudspeakers, etc., saturating the brain of the newly-born composer...
Awesome man keep going it's gonna help every musician in the world
Let's make it 3 million views
8:30-8:41 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭 soooo sad!!!!!!
Oh S***, thank you for increasing my anxiety of ripping off songs from other artists... this could actually end my career before it’s even begun!
How about Cadence and BBP… the infinitely variable potential length of each note. That can change a melody drastically. Is any given melody, the same melody regardless of note length?
Yeah they’ve left out rhythm which is the most crucial aspect of melody imo. Because of rhythm it is practically impossible to come up with an existing vocal melody. On instruments it isn’t that simple though. Standard time signatures and note lengths are used there.
I think this guy don't really understand music... and what about Rhythm ? Rhythm is really important in a melody.
kermheat BAM! It’s over , you got him. Done
Yeah and "8 notes". He forgot the flats/sharps and if he included 2 C-notes, why not 2 D-notes and so on? Since it makes a huge difference if you are using more than just one octave...
Agh God my brain hurts from the idiocy.
Computers are only so powerful.
Putting a song in a different key is still considered a variant of that song and is thus copyrightable.
It's _good enough_ to fall under "all melodies" in the eyes of copyright.
Allen Sherman got a copyright on the musical note c Any song that has the note c in it is in violation.
I'm struggling with this right now. I made a song several years ago with plans to use it as the main theme of a video game. I posted it to the internet, and it got a couple hundred views. Now, a new game coming out this year, the sequel to a very popular franchise, is using the same exact melody. So, I am almost positive that they never heard my song before. What I'm scared of is getting myself sued for using the same melody in a game.
You don't have to worry about that. Because if you wrote before hearing it from the other game. You already have the proof in your computer. When you first record it or program it. Your computer marks the dat as you probably already know. Therefore you have the date. If the date is prior for their creation they don't have anything on you. Cased close. Won't go any further.
DREAMCRASH
I agree with the above commenter. You’ve published your melody online, and that comes with post date. It’s yours.
If you are in the United States, you already have established copyright for the song. It is the newcomer that is infringing on your rights. They would lose any action in court against you if it went that far. You may wish to consider preserving the evidence of your own work, submit it for a copyright registration (currently about a $55 fee), and start crowdfunding for the legal fees to cover the lawsuit you will be starting.
@@misterlyle. Thanks for the advice. Although, in this particular situation I couldn't bring myself to sue, as my own project gets closer to fruition I will have to prepare for a proper response in case I am sent a cease-and-desist. I don't really know enough about how these things actually play out to know exactly what I need, but I will be able to get in touch with a lawyer for advice if it comes to that.
@@isweartofuckinggod You will probably only become a target if your project is hugely successful; so good luck going forward!
No such thing as a unique pattern... . They are simply yet to be discovered.
Not anymore with this it's already "discovered"..And waiting for you to infringe upon..smh
10:54 - No, that won't happen. Even if they keep just 12 notes, and only 88 keys/notes on a standard piano, that would create over 216 _sextillion_ melodies which at even just a single byte per melody would take up over 186 _zettabytes_ which you definitely could not store on a hard-drive to make it count as automatically copyrighted, forget about 100 notes. The most you could do would be to write down a _description_ of the melodies instead of the melodies themselves, which doesn't count.
While there are 88 keys on some keyboards, those are not all separate notes.
It doesn't matter if you play a song in B flat or A minor, the notes are the same for a melody. There are only 12 actually notes weather you have a keyboard with 12 keys or 1200.
@@TheNewsDepot That's exactly right. And that's why we chose those parameters. A cover song in a different key is still a copy.
Also the octave does not matter. A melody doesn't change because I shifted up/down an octave or so. That limits the song space by a lot. The real number eater is when you have long melodies. But a melody is rarely more than 1 dozen or so notes long and even at twice that length, it can be set to copyrightable form. You may not be able to cover them all, but you can cover most of the useful ones.
Yes, @@jppagetoois right. And a way to make even longer melodies: Connect Melody1 with Melody2. So a "long melody" is just two shorter melodies.
why is the audio on TED talks always so low
This was mind blowing!!!
what an accomplished human being....
Let' s get this to 3 mil!!!!!
4 years later, where did this end up going? Maybe nowhere?
Reminds me of that one VSauce video from back in the days where he mentioned this issue…
this is awsome
This is from early 2020. I wonder if this has had an impact on any cases since. Very interesting
This video should have at least 3 million views.
There is no copyright on words like "Hey" "a" "sad" "Jude" "don't" "bad" "take" "song" "make" "it" "better". But if you take that and put it into order there clearly is infringement there.
Same should go for music. Small 4-12 note sections shouldn't be looked at under the microscope, but more in musical context of the whole composition.
Can’t believe I’m only seeing this now…
melodies and notes are like paint it's limited, while words and melodies are like a canvas
it also means someone can own all the songs if they can buy the melodies
Ok but what if a melody so simple and basic contracts to other songs, possibly hundreads and just cancel each other out? Like a bassline or a drum melody?
I love this!
The idea behind this is great, and I support it.
But there are a few points that even as amateur musician make me feel irritated:
a) 8 tones? Just leaving out other tonal systems, chromatic scales have 12 notes per octave...
b) Hitting the same note on different octaves is a big difference, if I go up by 5 or down by 3 is definitely not the same.
c) Although you can play the same melody faster or slower, there's still different rhythm and breaks possible
Its absolutely not the same if I hold the note twice as long as the next, and the following again as long as the first, or just play all 3 the same length.
"A melody (from Greek μελῳδία, melōidía, "singing, chanting"),[1] also tune, voice, or line, is a linear succession of musical tones that the listener perceives as a single entity. In its most literal sense, a melody is a combination of pitch and rhythm, while more figuratively, the term can include successions of other musical elements such as tonal color." (from wikipedia)
Just following this definition you could find even more problems.
Keep up the great work man!
In the litany of copyright infringement lawsuits, technology lawyer and musician Damien Riehl demonstrates that music is merely math, and has a finite number of possible melodies. If you’ve ever thought a song you like sounded similar to another, the culprit may not be an unethical forger, but rather the limited mathematical musical equations that our favorite artists have to work with. Current copyright law is at risk of severely limiting future music creation and future human creativity. This talk suggests a new way to handle these legal cases. Damien Riehl is a technology lawyer with a B.S. in music. After beginning to code in 1985, and for the web in 1995, he has worked for the chief judges of state and federal courts; litigated for a decade; taught law-school copyright classes; and led teams in software development, digital forensics, proactive cybersecurity, reactive cybersecurity incidents, and world-scale investigations. Damien’s combined experience in the law, technology, and music has inspired his most recent project-copyrighting billions of unique melodies. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community.
Bump
That's wild! So it's like THAT now.. this is very informative 👍
Finally, something that makes sense.
So, all the melodies was generated, but when law will be changed?
This is sort of true. But if you consider the timbre and rhythms, time and key signatures it becomes much more analogous to written works. Although the number of available word combinations is huge, it is still finite. Music is a creative work that could be maliciously copied. But copyright law is vague, ambiguous, and subject to rampant abuse - it does need to be changed. With the explosion of created content, copyright law in its current form is untenable. There should be at the least be a requirement that the creator had a clear act of copying which in turn should be a high bar, with innocence until proven guilty. This should also apply to written works and other forms intellectual property.
therefore silence is now protected by copyright , right ??
I wish someone had done this back in the 60's. I think all the best melodies are already the red ones.
I think you are right. They may have identified every possible sequence of notes, but most of them probably don't sound any good.