Every Melody Has Been Copyrighted

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Aosta
Posts: 1051
Joined: 26 Jun 2017

12 Feb 2020

An interesting video about ownership of songs and copyright laws.

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chimp_spanner
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Joined: 06 Mar 2015

12 Feb 2020

Yeah literally just shared this on FB! Super interesting. My immediate thought was; where does this put something like QNG? I'm sure that with the right settings, every melody and rhythm ever written might pop out by accident at some point. If you're just curating/selecting from random output then are *you* really breaching copyright at all?

A friend of mine works in music law and some of the stories she's told me really leave a bitter taste in my mouth. The absurd levels of technicality and minutiae big companies will get into to 'protect their assets' is ridiculous. One example in particular (not related to melody) was where some company got absolutely rinsed because they used audio from a physical CD they weren't licensed to use. The actual data on it was indistinguishable from a digital copy from literally ANY other source. But for one reason or another, it was discovered that they got it from a specific physical source and suddenly they were in hot water. Of course from my friend's perspective, it was a good day for them and she was pretty pleased about it. I, on the other hand, thought it was incredibly dumb. Like how is there a whole industry geared around...THAT. Whatever that is.

Music copyright needs a healthy dose of common sense in order to work correctly.

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Aosta
Posts: 1051
Joined: 26 Jun 2017

12 Feb 2020

chimp_spanner wrote:
12 Feb 2020
A friend of mine works in music law and some of the stories she's told me really leave a bitter taste in my mouth.
The one that really gets me in recent years is The Verve's Bitter Sweet Symphony and that copyright saga! They got rammed hard by scummy lawyers.
Tend the flame

Yonatan
Posts: 1556
Joined: 18 Jan 2015

12 Feb 2020

Interesting subject. I guess this is even more of a minefield in the US, where lawsuits are quite common. But as everything, even local bands and artists are getting on global platforms, it surely is something that needs to get some new standards as judgements. I mean, sometimes I see how obvious stealing are dismissed, while other cases not even close, are getting through, just because some similar beat (I think many beats sound very much the same these days).

And some sub-genres are almost dependent on some very same harmonies and rhythms. There is much of copy and paste styles today, and we have more and more AI generated melodies and we have EzKeys and so on and so on. It is more about expression and creativity as a whole than exact melodies. Borrowing (often unconsciously) is a part of musical progression, but adding in other flavors and putting things in new contexts etc. Obvious poorly lazy ripoffs should be displayed. But the law side of this is a bit tricky, who owns what!? Just make us have Universal Basic Income and create more freely and share the jobs that is necessary, and skip doing what is merely "for the salary".

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Timmy Crowne
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Location: California, United States

12 Feb 2020

When I first saw the thumbnail I thought someone really was claiming ownership of all melodies, but I’m relieved that these guys are trying to demonstrate how ridiculous a lot of these lawsuits are by extending their premises to absurdity. I think a big problem is that most of the judges and juries who sit on these cases aren’t musicians. To the average person, every blues song is a rip-off of another, every house song is a rip-off, etc.

Yonatan
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Joined: 18 Jan 2015

12 Feb 2020

Only God has copyright on every atom of Creation. And who´s gonna put a lawsuit on God? The Devil!? :)

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BRIGGS
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Location: Orange County California

12 Feb 2020

Yonatan wrote:
12 Feb 2020
Only God has copyright on every atom of Creation. And who´s gonna put a lawsuit on God? The Devil!? :)
:thumbs_up:

The devil is dog on a chain! :puf_smile:
r11s

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jam-s
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12 Feb 2020

This just shows that copyright laws are not up to date for the modern computer/digital age. (Just like the international pirate movement (of pirate parties) has been telling since almost 15 years.)

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Creativemind
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Location: Stoke-On-Trent, England, UK

12 Feb 2020

Aosta wrote:
12 Feb 2020
chimp_spanner wrote:
12 Feb 2020
A friend of mine works in music law and some of the stories she's told me really leave a bitter taste in my mouth.
The one that really gets me in recent years is The Verve's Bitter Sweet Symphony and that copyright saga! They got rammed hard by scummy lawyers.
Yes they did. It was the Stones' greedy manager, Alan Klein who was their manager between 64 and 69 think it was. He owned the copyright.

Anyway, good news, at the end of last year something changed (can't remember what now) and then the copyright was in the hands of Jagger / Richards and they handed the copyright royalties to Richard Ashcroft. The downside is that it'll only apply to royalties (I think so anyway) going forward.
:reason:

Reason Studio's 11.3 / Cockos Reaper 6.82 / Cakewalk By Bandlab / Orion 8.6
http://soundcloud.com/creativemind75/iv ... soul-mix-3

Proboscis
Posts: 1004
Joined: 28 Aug 2019

13 Feb 2020

The record labels and those who represent their interests have become disgusting, despicable and evil. And YouTube SUPPORT their actions in pursuing content creators to claw back revenue that was never theirs to begin with. They've always been assholes to musicians, with only a few artists through history standing up to their bullshit (Led Zeppelin, Metallica, to name a couple) but they need to go, and Google needs to stop supporting their shady and threatening behavior.

Some time ago I uploaded a video, and used a song that was from a band that had very openly and publicly stated THIS ALBUM IS FREE. Free to download, free to print off CD's, Vinyl, to sell, free to reproduce the artwork. Every possible variation of free. But within 24 hours I received a copyright notice ! I explained the status of the song as not commanding royalties, and they basically replied a second time with BAD LUCK. And then stated... this is the kicker... if I choose to respond again with a further dispute against the claimant, my Youtube account might be shut down ! So either 'shut the fuck up and accept the illegal and unethical claims of the evil corporation, or we are going to destroy you'.

I also posted a video with 10 seconds of a very obscure Iranian band, and also within 24 hours it was pinged with a violation, from some US entity. They clearly use automated processing/checking in finding this stuff, and I don't think there is any human interaction, it's just a robot churning through videos and making claims for a $$ windfall. And Google are allowing that. Allowing the labels to grow a goddamn money tree

Whats even more shocking is that both of those video were set to PRIVATE. So Google have given them the green light to work from within their service, rather than scouring public publishings.

Further to that, many music youtubers have commented that even when using a small sample of a song, the labels chase them down and claw back 100% of the videos ad revenue. So these count are making money from nothing, at the expense of independent creators. It's become so ridiculous that content creators, lets say a guitarist teaching some licks of a famous song, are too afraid to do so, for fear of having their ad revenue claimed. The label for The Eagles, and the band themselves are complete money-hungry monsters about pursuing every possible outlet to claw back money. It's such a sad state that a travel vlogger I watch claims to have been copyright struck and money taken out because a song was playing in the background of a selfie stick scene, in a back street of Mumbai, and a non-western Hindi song. Now everytime if he's passing a shop blaring music, he has to stop the video, or mask/mute the sound in post-production. That's just madness. Total fucking madness

Not to mention a standard contract these days sees an artist signing over much of their touring And merch royalties to the labels. Back in the day, that was a HUGE part of a band's profit, since the record companies signed them to slave/plantation owner type contracts for their albums.

Distribution services should also be approached with caution. I think the assholes who run CD Baby actively pursue for ad revenue clawback on creators if a song is part of their uncatalogued. EVEN IF ITS YOUR OWN SONG ! They want their pound of flesh, and you cannot dare try and put your own material on Youtube without them wanting their cut. But, it's not just a pound of flesh, its 100% in some cases. Absolute count.

I rarely lose my shit on forums, but in this case the main players in music industry in 2020 can fucking burn to death, be reincarnated and burn to death again a thousand more times, before finally being reincarnated one last time as filthy sewer cockroaches to live in shit for eternity.

Yonatan
Posts: 1556
Joined: 18 Jan 2015

13 Feb 2020

Proboscis wrote:
13 Feb 2020
The record labels and those who represent their interests have become disgusting, despicable and evil. And YouTube SUPPORT their actions in pursuing content creators to claw back revenue that was never theirs to begin with. They've always been assholes to musicians, with only a few artists through history standing up to their bullshit (Led Zeppelin, Metallica, to name a couple) but they need to go, and Google needs to stop supporting their shady and threatening behavior.

Some time ago I uploaded a video, and used a song that was from a band that had very openly and publicly stated THIS ALBUM IS FREE. Free to download, free to print off CD's, Vinyl, to sell, free to reproduce the artwork. Every possible variation of free. But within 24 hours I received a copyright notice ! I explained the status of the song as not commanding royalties, and they basically replied a second time with BAD LUCK. And then stated... this is the kicker... if I choose to respond again with a further dispute against the claimant, my Youtube account might be shut down ! So either 'shut the fuck up and accept the illegal and unethical claims of the evil corporation, or we are going to destroy you'.

I also posted a video with 10 seconds of a very obscure Iranian band, and also within 24 hours it was pinged with a violation, from some US entity. They clearly use automated processing/checking in finding this stuff, and I don't think there is any human interaction, it's just a robot churning through videos and making claims for a $$ windfall. And Google are allowing that. Allowing the labels to grow a goddamn money tree

Whats even more shocking is that both of those video were set to PRIVATE. So Google have given them the green light to work from within their service, rather than scouring public publishings.

Further to that, many music youtubers have commented that even when using a small sample of a song, the labels chase them down and claw back 100% of the videos ad revenue. So these count are making money from nothing, at the expense of independent creators. It's become so ridiculous that content creators, lets say a guitarist teaching some licks of a famous song, are too afraid to do so, for fear of having their ad revenue claimed. The label for The Eagles, and the band themselves are complete money-hungry monsters about pursuing every possible outlet to claw back money. It's such a sad state that a travel vlogger I watch claims to have been copyright struck and money taken out because a song was playing in the background of a selfie stick scene, in a back street of Mumbai, and a non-western Hindi song. Now everytime if he's passing a shop blaring music, he has to stop the video, or mask/mute the sound in post-production. That's just madness. Total fucking madness

Not to mention a standard contract these days sees an artist signing over much of their touring And merch royalties to the labels. Back in the day, that was a HUGE part of a band's profit, since the record companies signed them to slave/plantation owner type contracts for their albums.

Distribution services should also be approached with caution. I think the assholes who run CD Baby actively pursue for ad revenue clawback on creators if a song is part of their uncatalogued. EVEN IF ITS YOUR OWN SONG ! They want their pound of flesh, and you cannot dare try and put your own material on Youtube without them wanting their cut. But, it's not just a pound of flesh, its 100% in some cases. Absolute count.

I rarely lose my shit on forums, but in this case the main players in music industry in 2020 can fucking burn to death, be reincarnated and burn to death again a thousand more times, before finally being reincarnated one last time as filthy sewer cockroaches to live in shit for eternity.
That sounds a bit far from the more free creative early years of Internet. The greed has gotten very rotten. Its not in service of the artists to have such cynical ways to ban ordinary people. Same with movie companies.
But why do some youtubers seem to get by with it and others are being censored by automatic filters? Do they pay through their commercial ads revenue or through patreon donations?

Proboscis
Posts: 1004
Joined: 28 Aug 2019

13 Feb 2020

Well maybe what's discussed in the video is a good idea. Have every permutation of musical phrases in a central place. Perhaps register the whole lot as public domain that as such an entity, cannot possibly pursue an artist. Artists aren't making money out of physical album sales anymore, so there's no need for distribution. What are the labels good for these days ? This is the age of the independent creators. Spotify rapes them out of revenue, while the founders and shareholders become bililionaires. The future may well be in Youtube ad revenue, touring and merch.

Yonatan
Posts: 1556
Joined: 18 Jan 2015

13 Feb 2020

Touring while pushing an AI button, pretending to turn some knobs on a stage and wearing a cool outfit. Wonder how long that will be a thing ppl pay for. Or if many of todays DJs will end up gigging for a beer in a bar as the old cover one man bands. Oh that sounded dark. :)
Times they are a changin...or is it just a spinning wheel...

Proboscis
Posts: 1004
Joined: 28 Aug 2019

13 Feb 2020

Yonatan wrote:
13 Feb 2020
Touring while pushing an AI button, pretending to turn some knobs on a stage and wearing a cool outfit. Wonder how long that will be a thing ppl pay for. Or if many of todays DJs will end up gigging for a beer in a bar as the old cover one man bands. Oh that sounded dark. :)
Times they are a changin...or is it just a spinning wheel...
Did you ever see that documentary on the band 30 Seconds to Mars ? While 'recording' one of their albums, I don't think the guitarist actually played more than a few seconds at a time... ever ! They just played lots and lots of bits, and they were spliced together. How the hell a band like that goes on tour, I do not know. Well I do - they must be taking the Milli Vanilli approach to performance.

Yonatan
Posts: 1556
Joined: 18 Jan 2015

13 Feb 2020

Proboscis wrote:
13 Feb 2020
Yonatan wrote:
13 Feb 2020
Touring while pushing an AI button, pretending to turn some knobs on a stage and wearing a cool outfit. Wonder how long that will be a thing ppl pay for. Or if many of todays DJs will end up gigging for a beer in a bar as the old cover one man bands. Oh that sounded dark. :)
Times they are a changin...or is it just a spinning wheel...
Did you ever see that documentary on the band 30 Seconds to Mars ? While 'recording' one of their albums, I don't think the guitarist actually played more than a few seconds at a time... ever ! They just played lots and lots of bits, and they were spliced together. How the hell a band like that goes on tour, I do not know. Well I do - they must be taking the Milli Vanilli approach to performance.
Thanks, I will put that documentary on my "to watch list". Sounds interesting. It began in the 80´s and now the emperor without clothes has become the Almighty Intelligence (AI). :)

Heater
Posts: 893
Joined: 16 Jan 2015

13 Feb 2020

Aosta wrote:
12 Feb 2020
chimp_spanner wrote:
12 Feb 2020
A friend of mine works in music law and some of the stories she's told me really leave a bitter taste in my mouth.
The one that really gets me in recent years is The Verve's Bitter Sweet Symphony and that copyright saga! They got rammed hard by scummy lawyers.
I can’t see how ripping the complete backing track and then doing karaoke over it and claiming it as your own is entirely justified.

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