Music and copyright

[olivermoss]

I was going to link just the last video in this series, but the context makes it hilarious.

Adam Neely posted about the Katy Perry copyright lawsuit where she got sued. The case is a mess and he breaks it down from a music theory perspective.

Then WB copyright claimed his video even though that copyright claim makes no sense.

In a more recent video he interviews people who set out to copyright all possible melodies. Per the current arguments made in copyright rulings If his video gets 3 million views (It's currently at over 1 million) it could possibly disrupt the ability of music companies to copyright music based on simple note progression in the future.

He went from defending WB's copyright to working on invalidating a key point in copyright case law. The 3rd video is great if you are interested in copyright, impact of archiving and art, but the context cracks me up.

Comments

[elf]

While he could have a claim on copyright for any number of future songs, it also means all the existing songs that match some of his tunes, could claim infringement against him.

They'd have a harder case - he can argue minimal use, having a purpose other than income, curation as transformative use, etc. - but the option is there.

OTOH, I'd love to see him start filing DMCA complaints against new music-industry songs/videos uploaded to YouTube.

[olivermoss]

The existing song problem occurred to me, but at least with this brute force approach they can't claim that they actually copied the other song. If the melody to 'Video Killed the Radio Star' is there, it's not because the guys heard it and consciously or subconsciously copied it. They've managed to remove it from the equation.

Who knows if this will lead anything, copyright law is a mess particularly when it comes to music.