Copyrighting all the melodies to avoid accidental infringement | Damien Riehl | TEDxMinneapolis

[Bhatakti_Hawas]

Lets take this video to 3 million views. So that everyone has 'ACCESS'

[ndviolin]

I heard him use several sentences that have been used before by other people.

[onesyphorus]

Aight.. lets bump this to 3 million bros!!

[hvanmegen]

These guys are musical HEROES.. they've created ACTUAL and FACTUAL melodies that are TANGIBLE and EXIST and copyrighted them as public domain to save the music.. This is what makes them heroes in my book.

[digitalgenes]

Pure genius. On their website in the FAQ they illustrate how it might protect someone from a lawsuit:
- July 2019: Our All the Music project (ATM) has mathematically exhausted a large melodic dataset — which contains Melody X
- October 2020: Adam writes Song 1 — which contains Melody X
- November 2020: Beth writes Song 2 — which contains Melody X — but Beth has never heard Adam’s Song 1
- December 2020: Adam sues Beth over Song 2. Beth argues that because Song 1’s Melody X was in the public domain already — when ATM project generated it a year earlier, or as fact existing since the beginning of time — Adam cannot later copyright something (Melody X) that is either factual or has been in the public domain.

So far so good ... but what if Adam had written his melody BEFORE July 2019 ? Can he sue both ATM and Beth ?!

Could the prosecutor argue that brute computation for a non-profit goal is not infringement, but Beth writing it in a song is ?
Or could the defence convince the jury that the melody can't be copyrighted by Adam in the first place because it has existed since the beginning of time, or is one of a relatively small, finite set of possible melodies and so cannot be unique enough to be copyrightable?

It is already very encouraging that Katy Perry won a reversal of the infringement verdict for her song Dark Horse on the basis that "A relatively common 8-note combination of unprotected elements that happens to be played in a timbre common to a particular genre of music cannot be so original as to warrant copyright protection".

[DarkPoet]

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?

[companerger]

Thank you for this service. The idea that George Harrison pulled back on writing music is a catastrophe to art. The ingenuity of this project is really helpful for establishing all art is prior art, especially in our songs.

[ZachCortez]

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

[misterlyle.]

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!

[xf_art_]

One day, YouTube's algorithm will pick this up again. I've done my part, and will be waiting.

[rapskallion]

You have exposed the failings of copyrighted music. Thank you.

[b.n.a]

I'm just commenting this for the sake of this getting recognized by the algorithm.

[meismofo]

This is literaly one of my greatest fears when producing, like how am I supposed to know every melody that was ever written and then avoid them WTF

[adondriel]

He should upload recordings of all the music to YouTube, see if he gets hit by any of the big companies, then sue them when they try to take away his rights.

[softporcupine]

This mans picture needs to be on every wall of every music classroom, every recording room, every band room, and any room that deals with music on the planet.

[Submersed]

Music really shouldn't have a copywrite on it. Unless someone blatanly copies a song, changing it a bunch to make something that sounds similar but not the same is how everything else in the world works anyways. Buildings are constructed from the same design patterns and science is done with the same formulas.

[daikimizu]

Glad someone talked about this, people need to understand that the language of music is becoming more and more thin and narrow for new writers/composers for not accidentally hiting pre-existing melodies that they didn't heard before or knew existed, alot of artist have filled lots of gaps in that grid that we are left with not much to work with when trying to be original.

[philippgrunert]

Simply brilliant. Thank you. The "Copyright lawsuits" were already going nutts.

[chidianuforo]

Good stuff. I've been a producer for half of my life and I produced this song once. It was an original idea and I was very proud of it. When a friend heard it, he said that it reminded him of another song. When I heard the other song, mine and theirs sounded exactly the same. I'm no big name artist so my song was never released but if it had, I might've been on the hook for millions. I applaud these two men.

[TheQuackinator]

these guys may have single-handedly saved the whole music industry. Hopefully as the years go on, more of the already copyrighted melodies are released into public domain as well.