
Programmers generate every possible melody in MIDI to prevent lawsuits - jensgk
https://www.musictech.net/news/programmers-generate-every-possible-melody-in-midi-to-prevent-lawsuits/
======
BookPage
vice article on same thing submitted 2 days ago and discussed:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22413526](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22413526)

Edit: And apparently discussed even more 2 weeks prior:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22301091](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22301091)

~~~
dr_dshiv
And discussed in 1692, by Bernoulli, Mersenne and Kircher

[http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu//full/1979HisSc..17..258K...](http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu//full/1979HisSc..17..258K/0000258.000.html)

------
kabdib
Back in the day I worked for Atari, writing game cartridges for their line of
home computers. I had a decent relationship with marketing and had developed a
reputation as one of the more helpful geeks.

One fine day a marketing guy knocked on my door and asked:

"What would it take to print out every possible eight-by-eight bitmap? We want
to copyright them so our competition can't use them."

Seriously.

So I told him the story about the king who wanted to reward the inventor of
chess, and upon being asked what he wanted the inventor said "one grain of
wheat for the first square, two for the second, four for the third..."

I thought a bit, and added "I think that printout would outweigh the planet."

He went away. I was not a helpful geek that day.

Later I realized that I had only considered black-and-white bitmaps, and that
preempting copyright on color bitmaps would have meant a lot more planets.

There's got to be a Douglas Adams style tie-in here somewhere involving aliens
with planet-chewer-uppers invading and taking Saturn, Mars, Jupiter and then
_us_ for some cockamamie copyright scheme in another galaxy . . .

~~~
jniedrauer
I tried calculating this number for 16-bit images in Python (8^8^16), and the
interpreter just froze. Go was pretty quick though: 3.940200619639448e+115

~~~
esoterica
Neither of those numbers are correct. Firstly, exponentiation is right
associative so 8^8^16 ≠ (8^8)^16 ≈ 3.94e+115.

Secondly, that number is wrong anyway. The correct number is (2^16)^(8*8).

~~~
jniedrauer
Yeah apparently each pixel of a 16-bit image can have 256 different colors.
Oops.

~~~
messe
That's an 8-bit image. Each pixel of a 16-bit image could have 2^16 = 65536
possible colours.

~~~
jniedrauer
I give up. I shouldn't post before having coffee.

------
tunesmith
It's about fourteen kinds of ridiculous, as summarized in other threads. No
rhythms, no meter, no tempo, melodies are longer than 12 notes, it's diatonic,
single octave, no concept of underlying harmony, the headline is literally
false, etc.

Some of the copyright lawsuits are dumb and this is effective satire or
performance art but that's all it is.

~~~
albertzeyer
The code actually can produce every possible melody in MIDI. They simply have
not stored every possible melody explicitly (uncompressed) on a hard drive
(which is impossible, as the size is infinity).

However, if you interpret the program itself as a self-extracting compressed
archive, they actually have stored every possible melody (in a compressed
way).

So the question reduces to how much the type of compression matters here (is
ZIP allowed? is TAR allowed? what about more sophisticated like PAQ? and what
about this Rust code?). This is what I/we discussed here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22441328](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22441328)

~~~
paulddraper
Gotta love programmers.

> So the question reduces to how much the type of compression matters here

If you compress, you can copyright the compressed bytes.

If you don't compress, you can copyright the uncompressed bytes.

As far as that copyright extending to derivations, e.g. decompressions, the
answer indeed situation-dependent. For example, converting a copyrighted font
from TTF to WOFF does not remove the copyright. But converting a copyrighted
font from TTF to screen pixels to WOFF removes the copyright. (Sorry I don't
have a reference; probably findable.)

The "self-extracting zip" derivation would probably fall into the latter
category; that is, the copyright would not transfer.

\---

 _But even if the copyright were maintained during your advanced
decompression,_ one could argue that editing down to very specific portion of
that _extremely_ large body of work was a substantive/transformational
derivation, which they could then copyright themselves.

Transformative works are very common in art. The most famous example is
Duchamp simply adding a mustache to a print of da Vinci's _Mona Lisa_ , and
copyrighting that. [1]

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L.H.O.O.Q](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L.H.O.O.Q).

~~~
paulgb
> But converting a copyrighted font from TTF to screen pixels to WOFF removes
> the copyright.

I hope nobody takes this as legal advice; I'm not a lawyer but I'm fairly
certain it's wrong. The font would still be the same work.

~~~
paulddraper
Alright, you made me add references :)

It comes down to this: Typefaces/glyphs are not copyrightable. The font code
that produces those glyphs is.

> Typefaces cannot be protected by copyright in the United States (Code of
> Federal Regulations, Ch 37, Sec. 202.1(e); Eltra Corp. vs.
> Ringer)...However, there is a distinction between a font and a typeface. The
> machine code used to display a stylized typeface (called a font) is
> protectable as copyright. [1]

In software, a similar "black-box" derivation process has happened many times,
e.g. UNIX/GNU. Copyrights applies to software source code, but not software
functionality.

Determining what is the "essential, creative work" in each case in a nuanced
way is a matter for courts and armies of lawyers: Apple round corners, Oracle
Java APIs, etc.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property_protecti...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property_protection_of_typefaces#United_States)

~~~
jameshart
Presumably copyright law makes this allowance for type because the _point_ of
typefaces is to be reproduced.

~~~
paulddraper
That is in fact, the point of all digitized information, including recorded
audio.

(But yes, I do agree that typefaces are exceptionally commonly distributed.)

------
albertzeyer
The code is written in Rust. The core algorithm can be found here:
[https://github.com/allthemusicllc/atm-
cli/blob/master/src/ut...](https://github.com/allthemusicllc/atm-
cli/blob/master/src/utils.rs) (Specifically the function gen_sequences. It
basically uses multi_cartesian_product to iterate over all permutations.)

Isn't it a bit of wasted space to store the generated data on archive.org
([https://archive.org/download/allthemusicllc-
datasets](https://archive.org/download/allthemusicllc-datasets))? I mean, as
we see, it's trivial to create them. The code above is kind of a self-
extracting archive, so it's just the same thing but in compressed form. And I
guess it should not matter (legally) whether you store it compressed or
uncompressed (or less compressed).

~~~
vbezhenar
You can trivially write a program which will enumerate all the possible byte
sequences in the universe. So you can claim that this tiny program contains
everything including god. So you can claim copyright for everything.

~~~
phonebucket
> You can trivially write a program which will enumerate all the possible byte
> sequences in the universe. So you can claim that this tiny program contains
> everything...

Not to get too far off topic, but even an infinitely long byte sequence cannot
represent all numbers. It's possible to construct something not representable
by that sequence via Cantor's diagonal argument:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantor%27s_diagonal_argument](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantor%27s_diagonal_argument)

~~~
dmurray
It doesn't contain the floating point representation of that number, which
would be infinitely long, but it does contain the UTF8-encoded constructive
proof that uniquely identifies that number.

~~~
Anderkent
Surely not? If there are more numbers that can be represented in any amount of
bytes (as shown by the diagonal argument), then you cannot represent a
constructive proof for each of them in any amount of bytes.

~~~
dmurray
Kind of. A constructive proof by definition means something like you can
explain exactly what the number is in a finite number of bytes.

The standard diagonalization argument is a constructive proof, identifying a
specific number. Normally a constructive proof is preferable. But with a bit
of hand waving you can make it into a non-constructive proof that there are
"unknowable" numbers that cannot be described in any finite amount of bytes.

~~~
afiori
In practice constructible for reals mean that you can approximate them with
arbitrarily small know precision e.g. a sequence of retional number numbers
q_n each no more that 1/n apart from the actual real number.

The point is that such a sequence needs to be constructive in the usual sense,
so there are still only a countable number of them.

------
patio11
But this will of course not work, because enumerating the bitspace does not
produce bits of the right colour:
[https://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23](https://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23)

~~~
Double_a_92
A tl;dr would be nice it you post such a long article that doesn't directly
seem to have anything to do with the current topic.

~~~
Leszek
It's actually very relevant, the TL;DR (from memory) is that lawyers (and
judges) aren't programmers, and the source of data (referred to as the "colour
of the bits") is as important as the actual bits of the data. Thus "I have
this bit pattern as part of a bit enumeration" is different, to the legal
system, than "I have this bit pattern because I specifically created it".

~~~
pishpash
What's the legal principle that distinguishes methods of generation? Even if
enumeration is definitely on one side, there is an infinite gradation from
there to human generation.

~~~
TeMPOraL
The principle is: _what actually happened_. "Enumerated" is a different colour
than "composed by human".

~~~
im3w1l
The line between enumeration and a very prolific artist is blurry. What if
someone instead of just enumerating them created actual songs featuring them
as themata? And what if those songs were tool-assisted? But still catchy?

I see it as likely that someone will eventually try it not just as a legal
strategy but because of a genuine curiosity in music and AI.

According to wikipedia

> There is a long tradition in classical music of writing music in sets of
> pieces that cover all the major and minor keys of the chromatic scale. These
> sets typically consist of 24 pieces, one for each of the major and minor
> keys (sets that comprise all the enharmonic variants include 30 pieces).

I don't think anyone would say there is any ill intent even though it is based
on an enumeration.

~~~
TeMPOraL
That's what courts are for! Their job is to figure out the shade of colour a
thing has.

~~~
im3w1l
Your color paradigm can trivially solve the current case - it's an enumeration
and not a creative production.

But the future case I'm speaking of will be a very real dilemma and either
decision will have drawbacks. It's not just about seeing through a hack.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _a very real dilemma and either decision will have drawbacks_

That's bread and butter for the courts. You don't need judges and juries and
lawyers to see through a simple hack; trying to use a trivial enumeration to
defeat a copyright claim is just "ha ha, nice try, but nope" issue no
reasonable layman would have a problem with. Shades of colour are of critical
importance in precisely those cases that are fuzzy, where there is no obvious
ruling to be made. That's what the courts are made for.

------
lillesvin
Adam Neely (professional musician and YouTuber mostly about music theory) did
a video about this with the guys behind it:
[https://youtu.be/sfXn_ecH5Rw](https://youtu.be/sfXn_ecH5Rw)

~~~
Lewton
This really needs to be at the top, as it answers a lot of the criticisms
found here on HN

~~~
ehnto
It also makes it clear they realise the limitations of the exercise (it isn't
nearly all possible melodies), and it shows their motives a bit better too
(helping protect against corporate music copyright trolls).

------
Robin_Message
I am not a lawyer, but as I understand copyright law there seem to be to be
two problems with this:

\- a copyrightable work must include some human creativity. It seems to me
that an enumeration of possibilities might be creative, but there is no way an
individual element of that enumeration can be considered creative.

\- Copyright depends on _copying_. If you release a song with a catchy melody
stolen from another song, then you infringed its copyright, regardless of if
there is an licensable version of that melody that you could have copied. What
matters is which one you copied, not the existence of alternate copies.

~~~
hannasanarion
> Copyright depends on copying

This is a response to the Flame v Katy Perry lawsuit, where a youtube video
with 100,000 views was deemed sufficient popularity for the court to assume
copying without proof.

The element that Katy Perry was found to have illegally copied is a 4-note
descending line with equal spacing between the notes. In both "Joyful Noise"
and "Dark Horse" the pattern was probably generated by a producer pressing the
"arp" button on a minor chord in a DAW. Neither of them actually plotted out
each of the notes with particular purpose. But the Court still said that the
4-note descending pattern is original and creative enough, the fact that it
was composed by software notwithstanding, and illegal to reproduce.

~~~
libria
Tangentially relevant is Adam Neely's take on that lawsuit:
[https://youtu.be/0ytoUuO-qvg](https://youtu.be/0ytoUuO-qvg).

------
shoo
It's interesting to think about this from a more general perspective: what if
we're not limited to midi, and we're talking about a more general kind of
_design_ problem, where the design problem is to select a good solution to a
problem within some (large) but finite and theoretically enumerable search
space.

We can think of selecting a good melody to fit into a song as one example of a
design problem -- searching through some finite enumerable space of melodies
and selecting a melody that's a good fit. A lot of the effort in this process
is testing and evaluating the melody to see if it is any good to listen to /
any good in context. This effort hasn't been done if you simply brute force
enumerate and list the search space without testing anything.

There are many kinds of design problems where the effort of checking if a
proposed solution is any good vastly outweighs the effort of suggesting a
solution.

We could do the same thing for other kinds of design problems.

In principle, what if we enumerate some (vast) finite space of digital
circuits -- if we put a few limits on the amount of stuff we can put into a
single circuit, and discretise any continuous parameters to produce a finite
space. Does that mean we can copyright all these possible circuits, even if we
put no effort into seeing if any of them are fit for any purpose?

Can we enumerate some large finite space of possible arrangements of atoms
into molecules and then copyright them all, without putting any effort into
analysis or experimental testing to see if any of the proposed molecules are
fit for any purpose?

Snisarenko made a similar criticism when this was posted 15 days 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.

\--
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22306857](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22306857)

From my perspective of framing this situation: this is dumb, as no design of
any melodies has been performed. The design is the uniform prior distribution
over some space of all possible melodies, most of which will be uninteresting
/ not fit for any particular purpose, which is a pretty uninspiring notion of
design.

~~~
pishpash
If intellectual property of this kind is a finite resource, then maybe there
should be a lifetime intellectual property "takings" limit.

------
filoeleven
Reminds me of an aside in Accelerando:

> His suitcase is full of noise, but what's coming out of the stereo is
> ragtime. Subtract entropy from a data stream – coincidentally uncompressing
> it – and what's left is information. With a capacity of about a trillion
> terabytes, the suitcase's holographic storage reservoir has enough capacity
> to hold every music, film, and video production of the twentieth century
> with room to spare. This is all stuff that is effectively out of copyright
> control, work-for-hire owned by bankrupt companies, released before the CCAA
> could make their media clampdown stick. Manfred is streaming the music
> through Annette's stereo – but keeping the noise it was convoluted with.
> High-grade entropy is valuable, too ...

[https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-
static/fiction/acceler...](https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-
static/fiction/accelerando/accelerando.html)

------
A_No_Name_Mouse
Wouldn't they get into legal issues as they are colliding with every song
already in existence?

~~~
bonestamp2
Since they're not trying to profit from them, they'd probably just get cease
and desist letters and take the offending ones down. Since one of the founders
is a lawyer, it's probably feasible to handle most minor conflicts that come
up while still protecting the vast major of the melodies.

------
725686
This reminds me a lot a short story "The Library of Babel" by argentinian
author Jorge Luis Borges in which he conceives "a universe in the form of a
vast library containing all possible 410-page books of a certain format and
character set"

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Library_of_Babel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Library_of_Babel)

*Edit: book -> short story

~~~
mustacheemperor
There is at least one website that hosts a "real" library of babel
(generatively).

[https://libraryofbabel.info](https://libraryofbabel.info)

------
tomlong
I know it's many orders of magnitude more difficult.. but if I got a printer
to print out one of every possible art and published it, CC licensed it, etc
wouldn't that have the same legal status as these melodies... probably none?

I showed this article to a musicologist (in the UK) and he said:

> I assume that somehow lawyers can refer to a precedent of "this is too
> ridiculous to be taken seriously"

~~~
cyphar
The other thing is that machine-generated works almost by definition do not
reach the "creative" aspect of the "original and creative" requirement for
copyright to apply.

~~~
bdowling
Exactly. Their work is not protectable under copyright because it is not a
work of authorship, but an exhaustive list of all possible melodies.

------
braindongle
Love the spirit of this work, but nobody is an authority on what a melody is.
How many different tuning systems were used? Why 8 notes? Why not 0..n notes?
[0] Is a given melody, realized at 10ms per beat a melody? How about a
17-month pause before the first note? [1] Absurd? Sure. But who decides where
the boundaries are? Lest one think that there is only an appeal to extremes
here, check out Polansky's beautiful Lonesome Road, and put boundaries around
melodies [2].

[0] [https://www.amazon.com/Larry-Polansky-Worlds-Longest-
Melody/...](https://www.amazon.com/Larry-Polansky-Worlds-Longest-
Melody/dp/B003P5AJIU)

[1] [https://universes.art/en/specials/john-cage-organ-project-
ha...](https://universes.art/en/specials/john-cage-organ-project-halberstadt)

[2]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0aIifUv1Tmk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0aIifUv1Tmk)

~~~
eweise
8 notes is what popular music is based on. I don't see why it matter what the
tempo is. Pretty sure no one would be in danger of copyright infringement of a
17 month pause.

~~~
braindongle
> 8 notes is what popular music is based on.

OK, forget everything I said but the 8 notes thing. Just, no. "Yesterday"?
Great melody. whistle just the first eight notes. "Yesterday, love was such an
eas". Hmm. Wonder if there are more examples.

------
nullc
Gonna leave this here:
[https://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23](https://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23)

------
drno123
Now is the time to train convolutional NN to find "catchy" melodies, and then
unleash it over this dataset, and become famous songwriter.

~~~
throwqwerty
You wouldn't use a CNN for this because there's no spatial correlation to take
advantage of. Maybe an RNN somehow but the basic problem is scoring (ie how
melodic a song is) not classification so honestly I don't know you'd do this
using neural networks.

~~~
nicklo
On the contrary, with a more generous reading of the previous comment, it
holds some merit.

1\. CNN's are used fairly commonly for sequence tasks nowadays. Convolutions
can be 1D after all. 2\. It's also possible the previous comment was referring
to using 2D convolutions on the spectrogram of the audio, which is a common
approach. 3\. Neural networks are capable of more than classification. Scoring
is a regression task which is common application of neural networks.

~~~
throwqwerty
a 1D CNN is an extremely simple RNN...

do people really run 2d convolutions on spectrograms? that seems rather
backwards to me - why convolve in frequency space when you can just multiply
in the time domain.

re regression tasks: sure I guess that's just an embedding basically right?

~~~
drno123
Yes, I meant to run 2D CNN over generated spectrograms. We do something
similar to classify some specific emissions in RF with good success. As for
scoring/classification, you can start by having an output of CNN say whether
the song is catchy or not.

~~~
throwqwerty
why run a CNN over a spectrogram? besides what I said (convolutions in
frequency domain are multiplications in time domain) an FT is linear. if
classifying using those features were effective then your CNN would've learned
the DFT matrix weights from the original signal.

~~~
kd5bjo
A spectrogram has time on one axis and frequency on the other, so the ultimate
result is a multiplication in one dimension and a convolution in the other. It
can be used to show things like when a note starts and stops in a piece of
music, which is difficult in either purely-time or purely-frequency space.

Also, it’s computationally intractable to individually train 2^N weights. What
a CNN does instead is train a convolution kernel which is passed over the
whole domain to produce the input for the next layer; by operating in
frequency space, it’s considering the basis functions e^{j omega +- epsilon}
instead of delta(x +- epsilon)

~~~
throwqwerty
my mistake i didn't realize spectrogram and spectrum were distinct objects.

>Also, it’s computationally intractable to individually train 2^N weights.

that's a good point - i'd forgotten for a moment (because i'm so used to
cooley-tukey fft) that in principle getting the spectrum involves a matmul
against the entire vector. which brings up a potentially interested question:
can you get a DNN to simulate the cooley-tukey fft (stride permutations and
all).

------
shadowgovt
Assuming we accept their premise: how does this prevent lawsuits? Wouldn't the
melody-set they've created be subject to a copyright infringement claim from
every melody produced before their experiment that is still under copyright?

~~~
db48x
The method of generation prevents that. They didn't listen to song A and write
down the melodies from it, then listen to song B and write down those
melodies. They generated them all in order using a computer program.

Presumably it prevents lawsuits because I can write a song starting with a
melody from this archive knowing that it's in the public domain. (Or because
it makes obvious the absurdity of having a copyright on a 12-note melody in
the first place.)

~~~
cormacrelf
It doesn’t prevent lawsuits, or do anything at all. Other comments here are
close; this material is not an original work, so copyright does not subsist in
it. No copyright, no ability to place in public domain or issue licenses at
all. This is the equivalent of pouring a glass of water in the ocean and then
declaring you own all international waters.

~~~
db48x
It certainly contains many melodies which are not original. But what about the
rest? It either contains some melodies which are original or it contains no
original melodies. In the former case then they can be copyrighted, and in the
later case they cannot (well, that hinges on access rather than mere equality,
but I'll ignore that). However, in the latter case nobody else can get
copyright on any new melodies either.

~~~
cormacrelf
In copyright law, original does not mean new. It means that a person
originated the work. Here, this was done by a computer. Remember the monkey
who took a selfie who couldn’t originate a work, and therefore there was no
copyright work to be owned? This is a monkey on a typewriter.

Copyright law protects expression, and the labour required to produce that
expression. Just like people who copy others’ work to gain from it, the
“authors” have attempted to gain from doing no work and letting a computer
give them all the world’s music. Imagine if they didn’t release their library
into the public domain, and instead started to immediately sue over every new
song that came out? It is fortunate that they cannot do either.

------
IvyMike
Overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out.

~~~
nullc
[https://archive.org/details/ninebillionnames00clar/page/n15/...](https://archive.org/details/ninebillionnames00clar/page/n15/mode/2up)

------
parasense
I'm sure this has already been remarked upon in comments, but.... Not every
possible melody!

A significant portion of melodies likely to be generated by people, or put
another way these are the more trivial melodies. The range of complexity is
vast, so just like cracking passwords might use a dictionary attack, or use
English alphabet, or similar limited scopes, so it goes here.....

------
grizzles
I hope someone Copyrights all possible Java method signatures for the Oracle v
Google case. You could write a "compression/decompression" tool in the
website's javascript for people to check if you own the Copyright or not.
There would be many pages of data so you might want to make it work offline
with a Service Worker. To prove you are on the up and up.

------
fargle
All very interesting discussions. Some have broached on it, but let's be
clear: mechanically generated sequences are not copyrightable. The program
that generates them is, of course.

It doesn't matter if there isn't enough space to enumerate them all. It
doesn't matter if most of them sound like crap. It doesn't matter if some
match a pre-existing song. It doesn't matter if you do or do not highlight
"interesting" songs.

The very fact that they are machine generated eliminates the element of
creativity that is a central requirement to copyright.

Copyright law may be stupid, but it isn't this stupid. An even more stupid
argument that isn't even valid doesn't really help.

> 503.03(a) Works-not originated by a human author.

> In order to be entitled to copyright registration, a work must be the
> product of human authorship. Works produced by mechanical processes or
> random selection without any contribution by a human author are not
> registrable.

------
MoroCode
What an awesome effort. However, frivolous suits will still remain especially
in places where the burden of proof rests on the defendant. A lot of these
suits are filled knowing that they can't win but use the machinery to drain
the defendant's resources until they are forced to submit because they have no
means to fight it.

~~~
adamc
If they have no means to fight it, where would the money come to pay it?

~~~
MoroCode
Might not be immediate money but could be something like owning the rights to
a song. Also "some men just want to watch the world burn"

------
makach
So...they have remade all songs made as well? I predict lawsuits coming...!

------
golemotron
It's time to repost _What Colour are your Bits_.

[https://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23](https://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23)

------
christiangenco
Here's a quick app I made to page through and play each of the melodies in the
All the Music catalog:
[https://gen.co/allthemusic/?notes=53325332](https://gen.co/allthemusic/?notes=53325332)

------
awwaiid
Not the greatest recording, but fantastic lightning talk kinda along the same
lines but for code, "Mark Dominus - Debugging the De Bruijn Sequence
(YAPC::Asia 2007)"

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QhtuG4htrb0](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QhtuG4htrb0)

------
Techies4Trump
I hereby copyright every combination of ones and zeros of length one to
infinity, now you cannot sue me .

------
scotty79
It wouldn't work in my country. Thing has to have individual creative quality
to be copyrighted. Autogenerated stuff doesn't get copyright unless a human
chose one of the autogenerated things for some particular creative reason.
Then this thing gets copyright.

~~~
steelbird
Which country?

~~~
scotty79
Poland.

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onion2k
The idea might be to prevent lawsuits, but presumably the authors have opened
themselves up to being sued by anyone who already owns a melody. If melody
owners can't sue the authors then their work can't protect anyone either.

~~~
DiabloD3
The artist suing, however, would have to worry about legitimizing this work.
If the artist suing were to win, it would be setting precedent that everything
else is the archive is also copyrightable, including all the melodies that are
novel.

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nmeofthestate
Definitely the most extremely programmer thing I've seen this week.

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JackFr
Won't they have inadvertently copyrighted tunes already under copyright? That
is to say for anything written before this stunt, they've given away rights
they don't own.

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varelaz
I hope that will not hurt them. Imagine that in copyright lawsuite I refered
to their midi archive as a source and since that they become in charge for
copyright infringement.

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dusted
I think it's an interesting idea, however, wouldn't this also risk generating
already-copyrighted melodies? Putting archive.org at risk of getting massively
sued ?

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nephrite
It can be argued that since the melodies were generated by an algorithm, they
are not a product of creative process and therefore not subject to copyright.

~~~
KMnO4
Now all we need is some “head cheese” [0] to generate the same thing using
human neurons

[0]:
[http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=687](http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=687)

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theGreatgame
I’m just gonna jump in and say how cool this is. I get that it’s not perfect
but it’s sort of a middle finger to “the man”.

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justaguyhere
I wonder if someone has done this for other things like say, generating all
possible combinations for 9*9 Sudoku etc

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DannyB2
Not to cause a combinatorial explosion, but...

next they need to generate every possible chord progression underneath that
melody.

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yepguy
This is something else. What will happen to the origins of sound after all the
sounds have sounded?

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anonsivalley652
This reads like an Onion article. I heard about this on _Lawful Masses with
Leonard French,_ a copyright attorney who pwned Prenda Law. Also, the number
of potential melodies, considering the degrees of freedom involved, is on the
order of the number of games of chess. IANAL but this doesn't seem more than a
stunt to call attention to the legal climate.

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classified
Copyright law that make something like this necessary is not justice but
perversion of justice.

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KIFulgore
Bobby Prince certainly wouldn't get away with the original DooM soundtrack
today.

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emilfihlman
Copyright law is a joke and this is the perfect way to demonstrate that.

~~~
ailideex
And yet this will prevent exactly 0 lawsuits.

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stiangrindvoll
So we could create a directory in IPFS with all melodies possible? :)

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amelius
Isn't any substantial block of random bits already covering this?

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ngneer
This was on HN several days ago, is it a double post?

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kyancey
Spoiler alert: This will not prevent lawsuits.

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jay_kyburz
I should do this for words.

~~~
jmkd
I've often thought how strikingly easy it seems to be to produce sentences
that have probably never been written before.

For example:

I am typing these words on a mobile phone whilst sat on a train to an airport,
wearing a green jacket, brown shoes and a maroon hat with a black bag
containing gifts for my children. That seems a fairly prosaic sentence at
first glance but I doubt has been written before.

~~~
rzzzt
Try searching for it in the Library of Babel:
[https://libraryofbabel.info/](https://libraryofbabel.info/)

(edit: ninja'd)

~~~
jmkd
Fantastic project, thanks!

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ShadowErin
this is kinda getting out of hand

