
You can't play Bach on Facebook because Sony says they own his compositions - rmason
https://boingboing.net/2018/09/05/mozart-bach-sorta-mach.html
======
yason
It seems to me that the content identification works as advertised: it's the
metadata that is missing essential information due to inadequate process.

If Youtube knew that the author is Bach and not Sony it would know not to flag
the soundtracks featuring Bach songs.

However, the problem is that at some point Sony lied to Youtube and claimed
ownership of these songs even though they are in public domain. So there
should be reviews or penalty for flagging copyright on someone else's works.

Sony could claim they have copyright on the very Bach recording they uploaded
themselves but if content id system can't differentiate between Sony's Bach
and anyone's Bach, then for practical purposes there probably aren't much
basis for the recording to be eligible for a copyright by Sony.

~~~
fipple
Huh? If Youtube’s black box AI can’t tell the difference between recordings by
Glenn Gould and Murray Perahia they should be equivalent in the eyes of
copyright law?

~~~
js8
Yes! If you can't tell a difference between a true Mickey Mouse and its
(slightly different) clone, and yet the other is not allowed by law due to
being not sufficiently different work, then I would say the guys who just
aren't sufficiently different from Bach should not be subject of copyright.

The truth is, copyright on interpretation is about the same category as
copyright on a work of a plumber in my apartment. I understand that's how some
people make money, though, so it's painful to change.

~~~
mikekchar
OK. We need to back up here as there are some conclusions being rendered that
don't quite hold up.

For music, there is _more than one_ copyright. There is the copyright on the
original composition. There is the copyright on the modification of the
original composition (for example to use modern notation, etc). There is the
copyright on the recording.

Sony has a copyright on some recordings of Bach music. They may also have a
copyright on modifications of the original compositions, but I don't know if
they do or not. They do not hold a copyright on the original composition,
because that is in the public domain.

It is difficult to record classical music without infringing copyright because
the modern printed scores are all modified. You can use the original scores,
but they are actually very difficult to understand and are akin to a different
language. In fact, as far as I can tell this is the reasoning behind allowing
a copyright on the modern scores -- they are essentially translations (and
translations of creative works are allowed new copyrights).

There are _some_ scores that are both modern and in the public domain. Kimiko
Ishizaka has been doing some good work on this front with her "Open Source
Bach" series (and you can even get unmixed versions of her recordings under a
CC license!!!). However, initiatives on this front are few and far between
(consider throwing some money her way as she is worth supporting).

If you have a score for which you have a license to record (or which is in the
public domain), then you can make a recording of it. It doesn't matter one bit
if it sounds like a recording of a Sony recording. However, it is quite
difficult to find such scores and often performers do not know enough about
copyright law when they start doing their own performances for Youtube.

~~~
softgrow
Non-musician here. Is it possible to create modern scores from the originals?
I can engrave using Lilypond or Frescobaldi for choral music to make it print
cleaner and super crisp. Is it that hard? Please explain...

~~~
mikekchar
Yes you can, and I believe Kimiko Ishizaka is using Musescore. I am not a
musician either, but my understanding is that very old scores are hard to
read. I don't know if the notation is different or if there is some other
problem. It may even be that it's just hard to get your hands on a copy of the
old scores that are not under copyright. This blog post describes one of the
problems: [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/293573191/open-
goldberg...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/293573191/open-goldberg-
variations-setting-bach-free/posts/71151)

I was trying to find some links describing the difficulties of transcribing
old scores, but unfortunately my google-fu is not up to the task. Bottom line,
I don't know how difficult it is, but my understanding is that it isn't
trivial.

Apparently IMSLP has nearly 500K scores, though:
[https://imslp.org/](https://imslp.org/)

~~~
mathw
I've got some experience playing from the original published editions of
various pieces. If you want a visual feel for the differences go have a look
at IMSLP's scans of period notation against modern editions their contributors
have prepared (many of which aren't the pinnacle of modern music engraving,
but are still way, way easier to read).

There are a number of reasons for why it's preferable to play from a modern
edition if you're a modern musician. While we can of course learn to handle
the older notation, we're battling with two different factors - firstly, the
printing technology (or handwriting, if we're playing from copies of the
composer's autograph score). As one might expect, music printing in the 17th
century was nowhere near as clear or easy to read as modern editions can be,
because of technical limitations coupled with various ideas they just hadn't
had yet. And you get some features, like beamed quavers, which show up in
handwritten music before the printers could do them. I'm pretty sure most of
the originally printed music was intended to be studied and memorised rather
than played at full speed from notation as we expect a modern orchestra to do.
Musicians employed in ensembles at various courts around Europe would have
been expected to do this, but they would've had handwritten music possibly
prepared by the composer themselves (who would also be working for the court)
for that occasion. And of course they would have been familiar with the
musical handwriting conventions of their era.

But really the thing that gets you is that written musical language has
evolved over the centuries. So if you go back and try to play from a facsimile
of an original edition you're likely to run into all sorts of fun things, such
as:

\- music from before the invention of bar lines has no bar lines, and it's
amazing how hard it is to learn to play without them these days

\- accidentals didn't used to mean that it applied for the rest of the bar, as
it does today, partly because they were invented before bar lines were
invented

\- accidental symbols themselves aren't the same as they once were

\- the convention for notating key signatures has changed

\- the convention for notating time signatures has changed

\- because ledger lines are hard to write by hand neatly, and hard to print as
well, there was a much greater diversity of clefs to allow parts to fit more
comfortably within the five line stave. Modern musicians are used to playing
from one or maybe two clefs on their instrument of choice. Some baroque
concert programmes probably took their musicians through three or four of them
on the same part between pieces or movements. To read these you need to
understand what clefs actually indicate and be able to unmoor your brain from
the fixed idea of what the bottom line of the stave represents.

\- ornamentation marks have changed, and composers made their own up anyway

\- performance conventions have changed (although modern editions generally
don't go too far in putting those conventions into the notation because
they're way too messy to notate even today, some of them do talk about them in
the preface material)

\- a lot of music from the time is full of mistakes, which can often be
identified by comparing multiple sources of the same piece

A modern editor preparing a new edition of an old work will be rewriting the
notation to modern conventions, adding bar lines, reworking key signatures,
changing the clefs, fixing mistakes, adding explicit markers for what would
have been implicitly understood accidentals in some styles, maybe changing
ornamentation marking to something more readily understood by a modern
musician... it's a big job.

Which is why the copyright in performance of these editions is defended by
their publishers, because someone had to pay for all of that. If you want a
copyright-free recording you have to go back to the originals yourself, as
well as finding willing musicians and engineers to record it.

And after all that work... the layman, and the lay-algorithm, probably won't
be able to tell them apart anyway.

~~~
brlewis
The expense is the reason publishers defend copyright. Technically, what
matters for copyright is not the total cost of effort, but the creative work
involved.

------
anonytrary
Constructions like this are living proof that maybe the system we've decided
to implement isn't as smart as we thought it was. Humans have a knack for
thinking they can control things they don't actually understand -- and we end
up with contradictions like this situation. I'll leave these here:

> I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and Constitutions. But
> laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human
> mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries
> are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the
> change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with
> the times.

\-- Jefferson

> That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it
> is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new
> Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its
> powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their
> Safety and Happiness.

\-- Declaration of Independence

~~~
pavanlimo
I tend to agree with Elon Musk's idea that every law should come with an
expiry date. So that there is debate before it is renewed.

~~~
trhway
>every law should come with an expiry date. So that there is debate before it
is renewed.

[anti]dovetails with the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings and the fears that
the important established precedents (Roe, Brown, etc) will come up for
debate/overturn soon once he(or similar guy) gets the position.

Btw, Constitution is a law too. Should it have an expiry date too?

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _Btw, Constitution is a law too. Should it have an expiry date too?_

Not necessarily. A constitution is a foundational law, a set of principles by
which the nation is to be governed. Those principles are not expected to
change very often, so no expiry date is needed. The detailed implementation of
these principles, however, could - and probably should - be done with an
expiry date.

~~~
0xcde4c3db
Ideally, yes. But some constitutions end up being dumping grounds for laws
where the amendment process was considered preferable to that of statutes
(e.g. if a constitutional amendment requires approval by popular vote and
therefore can't be repealed by legislators alone). The Alabama constitution is
infamously over 40 times the length of the US constitution and contains 900+
amendments.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Didn't realize that _individual states_ have their own constitutions! TIL, I
guess. Thanks!

------
haser_au
HN Title and article title are wrong. It was Facebook, not YouTube.

Source:
[https://twitter.com/JRhodesPianist/status/103696020877651968...](https://twitter.com/JRhodesPianist/status/1036960208776519680)

~~~
dang
Ok, we've s/YouTube/Facebook/'d the title above. Thanks!

------
pfooti
Headline seems demonstrably untrue [0]. Better framing should be, "contentID
incorrectly identifies YouTube sample as being part of a totally legally
copyrighted recording of a Bach work". (Bracketing for now the rightness or
copyright at all, I suppose)

0: [https://youtu.be/ddbxFi3-UO4](https://youtu.be/ddbxFi3-UO4)

~~~
srtjstjsj
And it's Facebook, not Youtube contentID

------
mlang23
Been there. I was, and still am, surspised that we allow for automatic
algorithms to do copyright claims. non-free algorithms deciding about the
faith of real people sounds like the stuff from dystopian scifi novels, but
that is what we already allow to happen in real world.

------
ekianjo
You dont have to use Youtube to host things though. Youtube is not the
Internet. We should go back to decentralizing things again.

~~~
tokyodude
it does feel to me you do mostly have to use YouTube. I can afford to host
video if it becomes remotely popular.

~~~
true_religion
Yes, it costs money to give things away for free. Now you can have YouTube do
it, and play by their rules which help them keep costs low... or you can do it
yourself.

Personally, I would put up a snippet, the serve a torrent. If it gets popular,
its popularity will support it. Otherwise, I can support my hobby with a seed
box for 15 a month.

~~~
QasimK
It may even be possible to use P2P video serving directly from a web page.

------
petermcneeley
This is simply due to an over zealous copyright detection algorithm.

That being said does any remember Napster and the good old days? Makes me feel
old and yearn for a more innocent time.

~~~
gamesbrainiac
Is there any penalty for being overzealous regarding the protection of your
copyrights? I understand that individuals could litigate, but I would assume
that to be a long winded process.

~~~
jcranmer
Filing a DMCA takedown notice for stuff you do not own copyright for is
perjury. (Filing one that ignores fair use considerations does not fall under
that category, though).

Youtube's Content ID system is not related to DMCA takedowns, though, so there
is no legal repercussions to making fallacious claims outside to violating
whatever terms of service the system has.

~~~
NSAID
Almost perjury. There's a good faith clause, so if someone believes in good
faith that their magic black box AI correctly identifies their IP and never
issues incorrect takedowns, it's not perjury.

~~~
Thiez
If only a judge would rule that such faith in the magic black box is no longer
'good' once it has made, say, 3 mistakes. At that point the user of the AI
should understand that it isn't perfect and be obligated to manually check all
future results.

~~~
krapp
You don't understand the purpose of these systems if you believe accuracy is
that important. They're designed to pacify copyright owners, to prevent
lawsuits against the platform and keep licensed content on the platform... the
heavy-handedness and opaqueness are intentional, as is the bias towards false
positives.

------
pasta
There are two types of copyright at work here:

1\. The music (score)

2\. The recording of a performance of the music

For old music nr.1 has expired. But nr.2 can still be copyrighted.

The question is: how does Facebook know the performance is under copyright by
Sony? I guess they don't..

~~~
Piskvorrr
That's a hard problem to solve. So every content-id system out there hacks
around that - by not solving it, and merely pretending that whoever claims the
rights first actually has them. Convenient for the platform and whoever has
deeper pockets for lawsuits.

------
frgewut
On the other hand YT is full of various Peppa Pig videos (inverted colors,
mirror images and all kinds of other weird transformations). YouTube's
algorithm apparently can't detect such copyright violations. And the really
annoying part is that these videos often rank higher than the original ones.

~~~
bryanrasmussen
but are the copyright violations then, there has been significant alteration
done to the original work.

~~~
Rjevski
I would assume the characters themselves are copyrighted.

~~~
bryanrasmussen
I guess trademarked.

------
poulsbohemian
I have to wonder - isn't the response to this kind of ridiculousness to simply
not post on YouTube, for example:
[http://allofbach.com/en/](http://allofbach.com/en/) ? Yes it's not going to
get you the audience YouTube might, but if their platform isn't serving
legitimate artists then what good is it anyway?

~~~
metaphor
> I have to wonder - isn't the response to this kind of ridiculousness to
> simply not post on YouTube

Apparently not. From the article:

 _In one week, the European Parliament will vote on a proposal to force all
online services to implement Content ID-style censorship, but not just for
videos -- for audio, text, stills, code, everything._

~~~
mirimir
Well, then. We need online services that can't be coerced.

~~~
mattj1
[https://datproject.org/](https://datproject.org/)

[https://w3c-ccg.github.io/did-spec/](https://w3c-ccg.github.io/did-spec/)

[https://ipfs.io/](https://ipfs.io/)

I wonder if these might help.

~~~
mirimir
Cool, thanks :)

Bittorrent with streaming interface actually works pretty well.

Edit: Re Dat, this is interesting, and promising:
[https://blog.datproject.org/2017/12/10/dont-
ship/](https://blog.datproject.org/2017/12/10/dont-ship/)

~~~
mattj1
Nice find, they seem true to their ideals based on that article.

This is also interesting, cool demo of streaming video browser to browser:

[https://webtorrent.io/](https://webtorrent.io/)

~~~
mirimir
That's cool. But I generally block WebRTC, as a privacy threat. But maybe it'd
be OK, in a dedicated VM.

~~~
yjftsjthsd-h
At some level, isn't webtorrent a privacy issue? You're broadcasting, "Hey,
I'm viewing $FOO! Anyone wanna give me pieces of it?"

~~~
mirimir
That's part of it. And more generally with WebRTC, peers know whatever you're
doing together. And that's an issue with all P2P stuff that doesn't use
overlay networks to proxy connections.

So what I should have said was that it's OK in a VM that reaches the Internet
through a nested VPN chain, or whatever, so your ISP-assigned IP address isn't
trivially discoverable.

------
bovermyer
I'd like to see a debate on whether copyright itself is a good thing.

------
gwbas1c
The last time I reviewed copyright law, fraudulently claiming ownership of
someone else's work is a very big deal. This is something that can be handled
with a class action lawsuit.

------
xntrk
What is the smallest text fragment that can be copyrighted?

~~~
srtjstjsj
That's an empirical question, not theoretical, so it's "has been", not "can
be". Interesting question. Like the Bust Beaver function, apparently unknown.

[https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/copyright-trademark-titles-
wo...](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/copyright-trademark-titles-words-short-
phrases-joshua-g-graubart)

------
tomhoward
Recent related discussion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17884215](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17884215)

------
buboard
So their network generalizes well - Good! But they use it to identify
recordings - Bad. Stupid humans.

------
tempodox
I had better not let Sony know that I play Bach in my home without their kind
permission.

------
jondubois
The government keeps introducing new laws all the time. The system is becoming
bloated and exceedingly restrictive. Maybe they should focus on removing old
laws.

Or at least focus on adding more laws to restrict the rights of corporations
instead of people.

