Slashdot Mirror
Copyright Claimed on Telephone Tones
awful writes: "Two composers in Australia have copyrighted over 100,000,000,000 phone tone dialing sequences. They state in the article that they are lampooning copyright laws that protect big business rather than artists. Their website has more info and explains how they did it. You can check your number and make sure it hasn't been copyrighted by these guys. They have already recieved one offer of money - from a guy who wanted to purchase the copyright to his number so he could stop direct marketing firms from calling him." Somehow I don't think the inventors of DTMF envisioned this. Update: 10/04 14:11 GMT by M : There's a US mirror available.
Where are the copyrights going to stop? It seems that there should be a limit to the things you can copyright..
Don't you see the foot. Hopefully this means it's not real.
Jenny, Jenny who can I turn to
You give me something I can hold on to
I know you'll think I'm like the others before
Who saw your name and number on the wall
Jenny I've got your number
I need to make you mine
Jenny don't change your number
8 6 7-5 3 0 9
Well, now I'll have to get a rotary cell phone so I can call home without paying royalties!
Ooo!Ooo! I know what these guys can do for us - sue Hillary Rosen or any RIAA member when they have to call each other in order to make thier little cabal plans. Could you imagine the scowl on her *cough*lovely*cough* face?
Soko
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
I just copyrighted all the possible combinations of pulse dialing tones too... ahhahahahhah... you all owe me 0.05 cents per use... I'm rich!! I'm rich!!! ahaahhahahha
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
These guys are brilliant. But what about the timing, or spacing between the "notes"? If I dial in a different rhythm is it the same?
What, me worry?
Assume that phone numbers have at most 11 digits (ie 1-910-xxx-xxxx). Each digit has 10 different values. So there are 10^11, or 100,000,000,000 possible 10 digit phone numbers. Does that number look familiar? If the story is correct, they have tried to copyright every single possible 11 digit phone number
I forsee the following dialouge:
:-)
Me: hello?
Tele-solicitor: Hello would you like to buy-
Me: You have just infringed on national copyright hangup now or I will seize all your assets!
Tele-solicitor: *click*
Ah finally a good use for copyright
...as long as it stops annoying telemarketers from calling me while I'm eating dinner...
This very large series of algorithmic compositions originate from the early 1970's (our diatonic period) and were inspired by the pitch class set pieces of Webern and the stochastic works of Xenakis.
The Magnus-Opus series is based upon pairings of eight notes used to create sixteen different diads or two note chords. These tone pairs are used to create melody 'modules' of a standard twelve note length. Additional compositions may be obtained by joining melodies together, or by adding melody fragments to standard twelve note melodies.
Our method was to assign each of the sixteen tone pairs to an alpha-numeric pattern so that each letter or digit corresponded to a pitch pair. This sequence when expressed through the operation of a simple algorithmic generator produces some 10,000,000,000 melodies (together with a more or less infinite number of additional compositions produced by the addition of melody modules or fragments thereof).
It is not without reason, therefore, that we claim to be the world's most prolific composers, hence Magnus-Opus.
It has, more recently, come to our attention that many (certainly not all) of these compositions correspond to the tonal sequences transmitted in contemporary telecommunication, making us without doubt, the world's most popular composers.
Warning: All of the melodies contained within the Magnus-Opus series are protected by copyright. You may inadvertently be in breach of international copyright law by using a telecommunications device (telephone, mobile telephone, modem and other internet devices) to transmit and perform one of the Magnus-Opus melody series.
In order to ascertain if you are in breach of international copyright law you may test your number against our composition database by clicking here.
What, me worry?
Walk to hospital...
Tones copyright Microsoft
Can't call 911
I wonder how many offers they will get from telemarketers who want to buy that list of numbers.
(insert cheesy porn music here)"Pick up the phoooonnnneeee"
"I thought I had an Appetite for Destruction, when all I really wanted was a club sandwich."
IMHO, if they have the cash to buy some good lawyers, they'll probably be able to pull this off. What's sad is that big companies have gotten away with worse. (In fact, someone owns the patent on the Peanut butter and Jelly sandwich!) Maybe this will knock some sense into big companies copyrighting and patenting the lamest things (Hey, there's a patent on using a laser pointer to excersize cats too!)
-Patrick
--
Join
So, even if they have a phone number in their melody database, you don't infringe if you dial that number, because you created the melody independently.
Good thing I'm not six years old anymore and no longer so easilly amused; I'd hate to have to retain a lawyer just to determine if I could do that; especially on a six-year-old's allowance.
Ok.. um.. but what about actual songs. Would we have duling copyrights? I'm sure you can play dulling tones while you are at it.
-
ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
ok, little note for some prior posters:
copyright and patent are two completely different things, with two different purposes. prior art doesn't apply to copyright. ok...now that i've gotten that out of the way...
i'm not sure if i agree with what these gentlemen have done. i don't believe that such things deserve to be 'owned' by anyone. no matter the reasoning behind their actions, and even if they are attempting to protect people from corporations and 'BIG BROTHER' i find myself disagreeing with their methods. also, i fear the day that they are threatened and bought out by a [insert entity here]that doesn't have their moral fabric. in such a case, beware.
Hey! I honestly believe in what I do!
of 100,000,000,000 webhits in an hour? And is it copywritable as the slashdot effect melody?
.jpgs are loading REALLY slowly...)
(As I look now their site is not down, but
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
Apparently posting useless crap on slashdot *IS* on the list of priorities.
Glad I could get on with my life by posting this.
What can one say but,
ROTFFLMFAO!
Copywrighting names, like AOL banning GAIM is stupid but understandable.
But numbers? No longer may i have my 408-HOT-GUYS
:/
PayPal $$ if you sign up for free offers (eBay, cred cards, e
So, who wants to help me encode all these 100,000,000,000 possible ringtones and put them on Morpheus?
The real question is whether or not this tactic will hold up in court. If you check the article you see It blatently admits that the phone company had been using the tones previous to their copyrights.
What's more is, even if the phone numbers weren't already being used, the mere fact that the phone company has a pre-existing document specifying the format and access-method for all telephones negates any further attempts to copyright.
Besides, if 2600 can lose the MPAA case -- I'm sure a judge will throw this right out the window.
btw. I love Eggplants!
--ECA Rebel Bastard!
what about sampling?
could I sample portions of seven notes of a "melody"?
What about the dial tone before you dial? And then the sound of the ring after you finish ? Will different combinations free us from paying royalties? Doh... (_8^(o)
Sound waves should be free!
what about playing hot cross buns on the pad?
9-5-1...9-5-1....1-1-1-1-5-5-5-5-9-5-1...yes hello, and thank you for calling. this call is a violation of the dmca, and is being traced. please stay on the line while an officer is dispatched to your location. have a nice day!...
full length albums complete with print resolution artwork -- earth2willi.com
IANAL (and I know the whole point was to be funny anyway).
I have given up on fighting or arguing over all this copyright/patent bullshit, but as soon as some mathematician copyrights my Social Security Number to be used only in an algorithm, I am going to get pissed off and move to Germany or something.
And I refuse to sign one of their licensing agreements. If they want to take me to court, fine, I will see what Ameritech thinks of a law suit as well.
hrrm.
ohhh, they copyrighted my phone number, /. them out of exsistance! Oh, wait, you allready have. Nevermind, go back to bitching about RIAA.
this post copyright 2001 goatpigsheep
you can contact my lawyers to arrange the royalty payments required to respond to it
GoatPigSheep, the 3 most important food groups
I kind of doubt this is what the idea of copy righting was for. Copyrights along with patents were originally made to promote scientific research. Protecting one's intellectual property is the whole idea behind copy righting.
Some schmuck who starts to copy right tone sequences is totally not getting the point. He's not promoting scientific research, or protecting his intellectual property. He's just trying to make a quick $, through a loophole in the laws.
Its as if suddendly the sequence of phone digits has been invented by this guy and he has to have the copy right to your tone. This whole thing is as rediculous as the guy who claimed to own all the land outside of the solar system, and thinks he's somehow going to get away with that. If your armies/people are using/conquered something, its theirs, and no one elses.
- Nuts and Gum, together at last.
I hope this is a wake up call to law makers everywhere, change copyright laws now.
Quickly, someone mirror the site. You know you want the free mod points.
It looks like somebody needs to lighten up. Do tell us, how are you "getting on with your life" ?
Registering or claiming copyright protection and actually winning an infringement claim are two very different things.
Copyright (at least in the United States) only applies to ``original works of authorship,'' not ``[w]orks consisting entirely of information that is common property and containing no original authorship.''
Perhaps the authors could receive protection for the entire compilation, but not for the telephone numbers taken individually.
Many Slashdot readers would do well to read the U.S. Copyright Office's Circular 1, Copyright Basics, from which the above quotations were taken.
Permanent License for Personal Use- $1000
Permanent License for Organisational Use- $10,000
Bit steep?
Due to the Magnus-Opus Copyrights, LWY(Lawyers Inc.) Stock has jumped an incredible 45.23 points in a single day, and does not seem to be stopping any time soon.
Bet the provider wasn't expecting that!
Their routers and http servers will be glowing red by the end of this.
You started in the right direction by pointing out that copyright and patent law were not the same.
However, you failed to complete your analysis. Of course, having a copyright on those tones doesn't prevent any normal usage of DTMF. Why that is, I'll leave as an exercise to the reader.
Mmmm.. Donuts
That was the phone number for my elemantary school. They had a gold record for it hanging in the office.
Tommy Tutone be warned. Prepare to be sued by some rich guy with a lawyer waiting to
serve him that owns the patent to the phone number 867-5309 that you illegally sang
back in the 70s.
You will be sued, resistance is futile!
The thing is, there are limits to copyright. The shorter a work, the harder to defend its copyright in court. For instance, it is impossible to copyright a word, phrase, note, or chord. Short poems, like haiku, push the lower bounds, and have quite weak protection: only a very blatant direct copy might infringe on them.
Obviously, these are not legal (or at least not legally relevant) copyrights, and couldn't be enforced.
I know it's all in fun, but I think it would be more satisfying to mock the system using things that would stand up in court.
This is relevant to a more serious idea I had that also addresses IP abuse in the music industry.
There have to be an enormous number of melodies in the public domain. These should be collected into a database. (There's already a crude website that tries to do this, but I'm talking about something more elaborate.)
Ideally, one could replay music into this system (it is not used for distributing music, merely for collecting it) and it would compare against any known music in the public domain. At first, you'd have to manually enter or scan a score.
I'll bet except for some mighty wierd edgy stuff just about everything with a standard scale is already in the public domain. Would it be worthwhile to build a tool to prove it?
The pattern matching might need to get pretty clever, but the database would be large but tractable (something like MIDI, I guess). Suppose there are a million folk tunes and hymns and out-of-copyright jazz lines out there. A couple of Kbytes each.
Then start doing something like regexp parsing with a couple of simple modulations and mode changes, and I'd be surprised if you couldn't bury the copyright of just about anything.
This probably wouldn't work in any other copyright domain, but I wonder if it wouldn't effectively kill copyright on any music that uses the conventional scale.
mt
So we're cool.
Ok, copyrighting phone numbers is one thing... but, do you realize that they say to enter YOUR phone number and check against their DB, and if it's there, you should buy a license? How idiotic is that? How often do you call yourself, really? Ok, you sometimes call home, but most of the time you call *other* people. So, it is not the owner that should buy the license, but people need to get a license before they call someone, not actually the owner of the number.
And, like people pointed out, because of the dial tone and ringing after the call, it should be considered a different 'opus' than theirs.
I just hope they are joking and they did this as a political statement of how easy to do stupidity like this. I just hope so...
If a million monkeys type out the source code to MS Office, Microsoft can't sue.
The problem is that you'll need 256^{size of MS Office in bytes} monkeys to get MS Office. Phone numbers only required 10^11 monkeys, so it was possible to simulate the process with a computer.
Well this means that every online yellow/white pages directory is now in violation of the DMCA.
And while we're at it, we'll have to dispose of our phonebooks since they are now vulnerable to lawsuits of patent infringement.
I wouldn't be surprised if someone were to patent IP addresses.
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
Everyone on this site should remember this fact when Intel changed their chip naming scheme from numbers, 8086, 286, 486 etc. to Pentium and Pentium Pro etc. The reason for this was that the numbers could be neither copyrighted nor trademarked and other manufacturers were able to call their chips 486 as well thus leading to a loss of brand value for intel.
Does anyone else see this as getting out of control? Copyrights on a damn tone? Ok, a 'sequence of tones'. In essence, a short song, which can have copyrights. But once again I see someone coming forward (what I call) a little too late. They're now asking that a _major_ social and economic device have yet another charge layed on it. They realize it's not something that can easily be changed or dropped. The world is 'stuck' breaking their copyright.
I think Open Source and free software have come of age just in time to see the copyright system spin out of control and burn out in a ball of flaming dung.
~LoudMusic
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
...I'll be sure to dial a few extra digits after the number. :)
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Ah... but they have not in fact copyrighted the
numbers. They have copyrighted the musical
representation of these numbers as DTMF tones.
Additionally, like hell numbers aren't copyrightable.
What do you think an mp3 file is? It's a very
large number. In fact EVERYTHING digital is a
number. So if you can't copyright a number, how
then is software, source code, digital music,
digital video copyrightable?
I'm not callous but ... what are the slashdot masses supposed to *do*?
The world keeps turning, ac.
You've ranted. Now be constructive.
Display some adaptability.
No Jenny there.
*whup* "Get along, little electrons. Heeyah!"
If this company targets the RIAA for copyright, the world would be a better place.
I for one would vote the CEOs of this company into congress if they could stick a copyright lawsuit againts the RIAA for making so many phone calls to their lawyers.
It'd be a nice sence of irony.
Wonder if they got the 10-10-220 and 1800-collect numbers?
I'm sure they were already copyrighted, but wouldn't that be cool.
So couldn't you circumvent this by dialing the country code also?
-Tom
Actually, phone books are copyrighted. You can't legally copy lists of names and phone numbers from the phone book to make your own phone book for sale. Same for maps, which I always thought was the stupidest thing. A basic outline of the US is copyrighted. It is just a shape. A really bumpy shape. But if it is in a child's coloring book, it is copyrighted.
anyone got a copyright on copyrighting yet?.....hmmm...
I SURVIVED THE GREAT SLASHDOT BLACKOUT OF 2002!
I wonder what's next, someone copyrighting the sound that you hear on the phone when a phone rings?
Let's see, at one cent per ring X thousands of calls per minute = a house so large it has it's own zip code. Time to call the copyright office!
But they do have a good point, the best defense to an argument is make the argument so absurd. Like obtaining copyrights on something so simple and widespread tat people take for granted, such as DTMF tones, that the average person can see the flaws in the system.
You know who I think is crazy? All my ex-girlfriends!
If a million monkeys type out the source code to MS Office.
Isn't that how it was written in the first place anyway?
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
What they need to do now is record the tones and sell a CD and they can have the RIAA fight all their legal battles for them.
'Same speed C but faster'
These people copyrighted the sequences of tones, not the actual numbers. Didn't they? I don't believe you can copyright numbers, or someone would have already copyrighted the number 1 and would be the richest man in history.
I'm gonna copywrite the sequence of keystrokes: s l a s h d o t . o r g
Just because I AM paranoid doesn't mean they're NOT out to get me.
What are they mocking here?
Copyright law or some people's ridiculous mechanistic interpretation of it?
If a million monkeys type out the source code to MS Office, Microsoft can't sue. Likewise, if you happen to create a series of dual-tone meta frequency notes using a touch-tone phone using non-copyrighted material (a phone book, your memory, etc), then that's an independant creation. Now if a telemarketer overheard you dialing, and recorded it (made a copy), then you might have something.
According to this, I think, if I check to see if my number or somebody I know's number is in there, and it is, and then I use it I'll have gotten help from copyrighted material to dial that number. I'm infringing their copyright every time I dial a number after I see it there. Q.E.D that website is a trap to make you infringe their copyright! Don't be fooled!
No sig for you.
That's 321-2333, not 312-2333. Unfortunately, if you want to play the whole melody on the phone, there is no way to accurately represent the 5th (the 12th and 13th notes in the melody), but hitting 8 comes close since you hear (the 852Hz component of the 8 is heard as a fifth below the second, which is at 1336Hz - see the DTMF tutorial for where I got this info). Of course, its pointless for someone to waste their valuable time sitting there and trying to figure this stuff out like I just spent the last 20 minutes.
3 2 1 2 3 3 3
Mary had a little lamb
2 2 2
Little lamb
3 8 8
Little lamb
3 2 1 2 3 3 3
Mary had a little lamb
3 2 2 3 2 1 1
Whose fleece was white as snow, and
3 2 1 2 3 3 3
Everywhere that Mary went
2 2 2
Mary went
3 8 8
Mary went
3 2 1 2 3 3 3
Everywhere that Mary went
3 2 2 3 2 1 8 1
Her lamb was sure to go-o-o
DH
"Fsck you dirty hippie!"
Phone books give people the tools to create the copyrighted tones, and infringe on the copyrights. Thus, they, like Napster or DeCSS, are accessories to copyright infringement, and illegal in the US.
Same with telephones, i guess.
ben.c
Music doesn't only consist of tones. It also consists of durations of notes. Mozart wouldn't be mozart if you changed whole notes to eigth notes, quarters to halves, and so on. So, unless they've also patented every single note duration/ pitch variation possibility (not likely) there are at LEAST 100,000,000,000 ^ 7 melodies. Not including dotted notes, that's ^ 14. I think.
No sig for you.
What about when you use the "hang-up" button on your phone to dial? Like you click the button down for a second and then release? like for a 9 you do : tat tat tat tat tat tat tat tat tat , ect... Reference: Hackers, the movie. This does not create a "tone" so therefore it is legal!
Hrrm... I usually just sign my name.
Has anyone thought to report these people to the FCC? Let them handle it!
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
They'd only have to copyright twenty tones, not 1 million or whatever, since each tone has two tones making it up, and each digit is based on those combinations. Although there are also the pound, star, and a-d tones as well (although the a-d are really only used on PBX's) but those are irrelevant.
Got friends?
Here's a link to the Feist Publications vs. Rural Telephone Service Co 1991 US Supreme Court ruling on phone book copyrightability. Note they mention originality as a constitutional requirement for copyright protection - an outline of the US is only copyrightable if it has an original element to it (otherwise it doesn't promote the arts and sciences).
Sheesh! Next time, you'll be seing DTMF tones on Napster or your favorite P2P service, and they get to after them and shut 'em down.
Oh wait....
People don't seem to have noticed that finicky little disclaimer under the score of their telephone number:
e t.html#c2)
"Notation is an approximation only of the real pitch."
(See: http://www.magnus-opus.com/number_check.html)
The Equitempered Scale (or Equal Tempered Scale, depending on who you talk to) has pretty much been the standard for musical notes for the last 200 years, although the standard for A4 was only ratified as 440Hz in 1939.
The frequencies used for DTMF tones don't exactly match notes on the Equitempered Scale. I have tabulated the differences here:
Matching against the Equitempered scale:
(Based on http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/music/
DTMF_tone Closest_Note %-error
697Hz F5, 698.46Hz +0.2095%
770Hz G5, 783.99Hz +1.8169%
852Hz G5#, 830.61Hz -2.5106%
941Hz A5#, 932.33Hz -0.9214%
1209Hz D6, 1174.6Hz -2.8453%
1336Hz E6, 1318.5Hz -1.3099%
1477Hz F6#, 1480.0Hz +0.2031%
1633Hz G6#, 1661.2Hz +1.7269%
As you can see, there are some considerable differences from a "purist" point of view.
This begs the question: Have the Magnus-Opus musicians actually copyrighted DTMF tone sequences, or just an approximation of them?
Another question worth asking: Even if the copyright holds-up, is it the end-users who are liable for infringement, or the Telco's who are on-selling the numbers as their own property?
--------
Eletus99
Whenever one of these crazy copyright/patent stories comes up I am reminded of the story Microsoft Patents Ones, Zeros.
These are the standard DTMF (Dual Tone Modulated Frequency) frequencies are:
1209Hz 1336Hz 1477Hz 1633Hz
697Hz 1 2 3 A (Flash override)
770Hz 4 5 6 B (Flash)
852Hz 7 8 9 C (Immediate)
941Hz * zero # D (Priority)
It's interesting to note that A-D, * and # where not copyrighted, although they are used in telecommunication repeaters.
Tired of free ipod spam sigs? Opt ou
Why is this any different from a piece of traditional music? Or a traditional literary work? Each is based on a system of elements arranged in a way considered unique or new. If someone were to write "The Ballad of Free Art" using the DMTF tones and the refrain of the melody just happened to be the phone number to the RIAA offices, then the use of that number sequence would be piracy. After all, even if the RIAA isn't actively playing portions of my ballad, they are essentially encoding the melody in a manner I don't approve of.
Pax Digitalia
If it had been done at random by monkeys there would be fewer bugs. Now aplogise for insulting the monkeys.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
More like 500,000 monkeys. The rest were assigned to marketing.
Did they copyright a sequence including all of the numbers, or did they submit each number separately?
If they copyrighted all of them together, then you could use any individual number under fair use, since it is not the whole work.
Seems the foggy historical section of my brain recalls a story ("legend") of Steve and Steve creating a machine called a "Black Box" that created the dual tones, and could circumvent long distance charges. They should hold the patent, for articulating these tone pairs...in a unique way - and that was about 30 years ago?
db
Cig:
ôô
Judging from the comments, one would think we would have realized by now that you occasionally *call home* or *call work* on occasion.
If your home or work number has stayed the same for a while, you likely have prior art on them. It would be funny if a million slashdotters suddenly sued them for big bucks for trying to make money on a number they've called for years...
Anyways, kudos to them. I like this copyright trick.
So if I reverse my napstered MP3s and put them up on Morpheous I don't have anything to worry about!
:)
Thanks slashdot legal hack!
Map makers used to put in little false details here and there to make sure their maps weren't being copied. A street here or there that didn't exist in real life.
I always thought that was fiendishly clever.
I wonder if they still do it - I've always suspected that Montana doesn't really exist...
Cheers,
Jim in Tokyo
-- My Weblog.
Some of us younger folks may remember this as a Less Than Jake song. Great tune.
WikiAfterDark.com It's a sex wiki, go now!
Just look at this article...
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
Yeah, I guess we should all lighten up. Thousands of people died. HAHAHAHAHAHAHLOLOLOLOLROFL!!!!!! Sand niggers in the United States are undoubtedly planning a large scale terrorrist attack. HAHAHAHAHAHLOLLOLLOLROFLROFLLMAO!!!!!:):):):):):): )
You disgust me, you stupid muslim fuck
Couldn't the phone company then sue them for incorporating their tones into the works that they coppyrighted?!?
Drink blood - 50 trillion mosquitoes can't be wrong.
If they've got all of the 555 numbers, Hollywood foley folks will no longer be able to give the audio when someone dials a number onscreen.
__
Do ya feel happy-go-lucky, punk?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Technically you don't "OWN" the phone number, but the phone company allows you to use it for a charge. They have no right to be charging us for stolen material, a number that is owned by someone else! I'm suing the phone company for all those bills I've paid...maybe I won't bring up the 976 numbers.
If you hold your phone up to your computer speakers after you enter your number, the computer will play the tone and your phone will dial that number. Go ahead, give it a try.
I can attest for sure, as a cartographer, that ALL map companies do in fact still produce inaccuracies, and quite intentionally. If you actually went to the trouble of comparing street maps to an orthorectified image (a.k.a., terraserver.com) of the same area, you would see that the map practically looks made up. Map companies, if they went to the trouble of checking, could easily tell if one of their maps had been copied. By the way, if you're looking for accurate maps to copy, USGS topo maps are far more accurate than any other maps available. They are made from the aforementioned orthophotos. And they are all in the public domain. They're not always up to date, however.
I have a feeling they may just be printing out a musical script of each sequence of numbers entered and then saying its copyrighted.
I entered characters.. they still said it was found and coprighted, but didn't display any notes in the score..
hmm
I can attest for sure, as a cartographer, that ALL map companies do in fact still produce inaccuracies, and quite intentionally.
And all this time I thought the Rand McNally street atlas of Dallas was just a piece of shit. Now I learn they do this on purpose!
I couldn't find my way to my own house skunk drunk with the Rand McNally map.
Yes, but that doesn't contradict rcw-home's point.
If you just copied a list of names and phone numbers from a phone book then you didn't create an independant work - you just copied someone elses.
If a million monkeys type out the source code to MS Office.
:)
Isn't that how it was written in the first place anyway?
Close, but not quite: they made a program that would create every possible combination of random bytes for sizes in exponential increases of 10 and then take the biggest available one that does something. That's why it's so big and unstable. The computing power costs a lot, and most of their staff just does testing on the rare ones that run to make sure they pass low-quality assurance, so it costs a lot.
Each 'new release' just means that their generator went through a few exponential increases and they found something that wasn't just the previous version with the word Linux filling the extra space
They that quote Benjamin Franklin on liberty and safety deserve neither.
There are more than 10^11 phone numbers in a the space of 11 digits. You have to include trailing spaces. 0055123456 is different to 00055123456. They used all 16 combinations of tones, so they would need to cover 17^11 numbers (including spaces) to get all 11 digit phone numbers.
I've already got 480 of the DTMF tones from Limewire and gearing up for the rest of them!
It's FUNNY you idiot.
"You can check your home, work, mobile, fax or modem number against their compositional database by logging on to www.magnus-opus.com."
Not I can't. I have a dial in account, and that'd be breaking copyright to dial in...
Isn't that how it was written in the first place anyway?
Or three monkeys, two hours. Might have been a rat-dance or a whirlwind, actually. That's more coherent.
Scientists have proposed models that are as probable as "whirlwinds going through junkyards, and assembling a Boeing 747". Maybe MS Office is that sort of event.
OS/2 - because choice is a terrible thing to waste.
I award this article the Worst Slashdot Lawyers Ever award. Not a single legally valid opinion is ranked above 3. Several utterly uninformed opinions are ranked at 4 or 5. Half the replies miss the point. Absolutely amazingly horrible. A record high noise/signal ratio. Wow.
Please for Gnu's sake don't whip off a letter to your Congresscritter based on this article; most posters have already looked stupid enough.
(Oh, in case you're wondering, the subject of this article is a funny-chortle, but no more. It has all the legal force of a Taliban edict in this country.)
This is certainly still done in Australia by producers of street directories. They actually add in fake streets here and there.
It has the added bonus of giving you an excuse next time you get lost driving somewhere:
"Well, you were reading directions from the map, and what's to say that every single one of those streets you called out actually exist? Of *course* I took the wrong street."
'Thats they exact same thing a banana wrench monkey.'
http://www.3dactionplanet.com/citizenc/magnus_opus _phone_test.shtml
The Magnus-Opus domain has been slashdotted to the extent that it is impossible to access their "test-your-phone-number" flash movie. It is mirrored above.
If you're havin' trouble with your high school head
He's givin' you the blues
You wanna graduate but not in 'is bed
Here's what you gotta do -
Pick up the phone
I'm always home
Call me any time
Just ring
36 24 36 hey [36 24 36 8]
I lead a life of crime
Numbers themselves cannot be copyrighted. Try sending in a copyright application for a number and watch it get rejected.
*However* suppose that a song is written and copyrighted. All well and good. Now it is coverted into an MP3. The MP3 is a directly derived work, and is still copyrighted similarly. If a number is a derived from that MP3 or WAV file, it is still directly derived from the original piece, and thus copyrighted just the same.
Copyrights are always about works themselves (of protected classes, of course) and their derivations. If some text/song/art/whatever is put into another form directly representing the original, the copyright works just the same.
Note: I am not a lawyer nor copyright expert. But this sure seems logical to me. Correct me if I'm wrong, however.
of course, if anyone ever dialed your phone number
before they obtained a copyright on it, they are
plagiarists.
This is a total crock of shit!!! Slashdot how dare you post this without any confirmation!! Does no one see what they are doing? The form you fill out is a flash movie. They then turn that info into a musical graph and spit out exactly what you put in! Oh what a surprise, my number matches, I should go directly to the aggreement page and pay these assholes some money.
Again slashdot how dare you?!?
Turn off the volume so that they cant get you for doing a public performance of a copyrighted work.
Independent invention is not a violation (unlike patent law.)
However, even in patent law, independent invention can potentially constitute evidence that an invention was so obvious that it did not deserve a patent in the first place (see also Pause Technologies' patent on storing video frames in a ring buffer).
I could spend months writing the perfect Apple II sprite blitter. You, being equally intelligent and hard-working, independently create the same 60 line routine.
This would probably be possible, given that the Apple II's 6502 processor has a simple enough instruction set to allow a straightforward proof that a given blitting algorithm takes the absolute minimum number of cycles. Heck, I once wrote a short asm function to interleave scanlines for the Apple II text display; I later looked in the IIe's ROM, and there it was.
Do we win? If he bought a copy of my game, and he is a known disassembler, then I have a good chance of winning. If you published your routine in a magazine he subscribes to, you will probably win.
And this is their trap. They managed to get their "songs" published in Slashdot, one of the most widely read (but not necessarily respected) technology news sources and discussion forums.
Will I retire or break 10K?
just type in some random charachters into the flash form... i tried
"^@#)(*#[][}{}{"
and guess what... its copyrighted
i dont seem to be able to FIND any DTMF tones for a Parentheses... how odd
The shape of the USA is not Copyrighted, the representation of it in a particular map can be Copyrighted. If I spend millions of dollars accurately mapping the cost of the USA, I want protection from you just ripping off all that survey work. Because anyone else's map of the USA will (hopefully) look the same, I will add artefacts ("watermarks") so that I can prove that a particular map was copied from my work.
Xix.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
A verifiable example.. Use your favorite street maping program. Look where I-205 crosses the Columbia River at Portland Oregon. Compare it to where the bridge really is. Bombs guided by GPS would miss the bridge by about 1/8 mile. Most maps have it East of it's real location. It's fun to cross it with a maping GPS.
The truth shall set you free!
Hey all...
Quick note - since one can *create* similar tones with a certain toy whistle from a popular 1970s cereal box, does that mean that they have the legal right to sue Quaker Oats now for some form of infringment? I mean, is this a case of being guilty by association?
Just think - when I was a kid, I blew a whistle, and this guy in the 2000s gets a thousand bucks per pop... In the 1970s, I blow this same whistle, and I can get all the long distance I need - which one is worth more?
Look at the lawsuits that will be filed! Wow! A reason to eliminate DTFM sequences and go IP telephony all the way!
(Whoops - looks like someone just copyrighted our whole office telephone network IP scheme... Guess I missed that one...)
moriarty@americamail.com
Where else but slashdot does a person get to make a post like mine and have someone step through the crowd and say "I'm a cartographer..."
Sometimes I really like slashdot.
Thanks -
Jim in Tokyo (IANAC)
-- My Weblog.
They're not always up to date, however.
So, like, these maps are old enough to be deprecated by plate tectonics?
The zero and the D on a "Beige Box" (I don't have a real phone here) are very, very, very close to being the fifth of the 6. (<--proof I'm like totally 1337--mod me up now or I'll fux0r y0r sist0r. !!!)
Your mouth is like Columbus Day.
I wasn't sure what chords the phone tones actually were, so I went to over to howstuffworks and took a look. On page 2 of this article on telephones, it has a great section on the tones.
In particular, I learned that "the dial tone sound is simply a combination of 350 hertz tone and a 440 hertz tone," and "if the number is busy, you hear a busy signal that is made up of a 480 hertz and a 620 hertz tone, with a cycle of 1/2 second on and 1/2 second off" and there is a great chart showing the tone for each button on the keypad. For example, the tone for "1" is a combination of a 1209 Hz tone and a 697 Hz tone.
A little more research turned up this cool frequency to note converter and where I discovered that 1209 Hz is equivalent to D6 plus 50 cents, and 697 is F5 minus 4 cents. So basically the keypad one is an out of tune inversion of the D minor chord. (music majors feel free to Score: -1, Moronic)
Of course, if you were into phreaking then you'd already know all that.
OK... lets assume (BIG assumption) that this actually will hold water in court and Magnus-Opus can legally collect royalties on 11-digit DTMF combinations, they'll probably collect bigtime on every phone book printed in the US (if DTMF combinations can be called a "musical piece", then phone books will be treated the same way sheet music would be, and the copyright holder collects on each printed copy of sheet music)...
BUT, they shouldn't be legally able to collect telephones and other DTMF generating equipment. Did they take out a copyright on 911? Doubtful. What about cellular informational services (*XX) or other countries in the world who didn't adopt the US 11-digit numbering system but still use DTMF?
They'll never be able to legally collect telephones, even if they WERE used to infringe upon their copyright. They'll merely be considered DTMF instruments. (Have you ever heard of anyone getting their guitar confiscated for playing "Enter Sandman"?)
I looking for a certain street one time, map in hand. There was a street that was between one street and another on the map, but simply wasn't there at all in real life. I thought that the street had just disappeared...Well, now I know.
I can assure you that it does exist; I've actually visited. Now why someone would want to visit is an interesting question, but there's insufficient space to explain that here...
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
One can only copyright original work.
Since all the existing numbers have probably been called at least once, it follows that the corresponding tone has been created well before this copyright crap and thus the latter is invalid.
They might have a case with number never created/used before.
The things people would do to attract attention.....
Just tried typing 000 into their site, its copyright! 000 is the emergency number here in Australia.
What a joke.
In Feist Publication v. Rural Telephone Service Co., 499 U.S. 340, 111 S. Ct. 1282, 113 L. Ed. 2d 358 (1991), for example, the Supreme Court held that the arrangement of names and numbers in the white pages of a telephone book was not copyrightable as simply listing the names in alphabetical order was not even remotely creative.
"Notwithstanding a valid copyright, a subsequent compiler remains free
to use the facts contained in another's publication to aid in preparing
a competing work, so long as the competing work does not feature the
same selection and arrangement."
A million monkeys could type out all of Microsoft's source code?
Ha! So that would explain [insert MS product name here] !
{BTW, all possible software-product permutations of this joke are hereby copyrighted, so this IS on-topic.}
Simple: it wasn't either coyrighted or patented!
Well,
With this vast world of stupid stupid people, here comes more stupidity which leaves me in awe, this time in my own country.
All my mobile (or Cell as you yanks like to call them) numbers and home voice/data lines seem to be held by their 'copyright'
I think i speak for many of us when i say they can go and F*CK themselves. I don't give a royal rats a*se about what they this in any way and if they are stupid enough to even pursue this and some crazy lawyer and senile judge can stand behind this and back them what can I say? What a crazy world.
Go F*ck yourself Dr.Sonique and Jon Drummond!
No, they only used about 3,000.
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
Mapquest does. The directions to our new office yesterday, printed from Mapquest, got us fairly well lost. The last to turns were onto streets that apparently don't exist within a mile or two of our destination. I guess us getting lost in a rental van that was acting like it was going to crap out at any time in the middle of fairly busy streets populated by hideously incompentent drivers and 2-ton dump trucks is a small price to pay to keep people from printing out copyrighted maps from Mapquest.
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Where do they find morons to design websites that DON'T WORK without flash? Dipshits.
"that's not encryption - it's a new perl script that I'm working on..." - from some Matrix parody
How'd you guess it was me?
-CmdrTaco
they just emit a sad beep no matter what button you press.
I'm at a loss as to what this has to do with copyright law protecting big business rather than artists. Are phone numbers supposed to represent artists, and the two pranksters supposed to represent big business, or what? Seems more like a publicity stunt to me...
Under the Fair Use Doctrine, I'm allowed to create derivative works, aren't I?
:-p
As thy copyrighted the tunes, just remove the speaker when you're dialing, and the tunes won't be played when the number is composed.
Another trick would be to dial with a modem after issuing an ATL0 command.
This ruling led to the rise of "wannabee" phone directories (which we've had in California for over a decade). The compilers don't copy the yellow pages ads, or any data processing such as separation of business and residence numbers, but they can legally reprint the raw listings.
... and yellow pages advertisers are forced to buy their ads twice, one in each publication. Sad.)
(What's pathetic is that the wannabee phone books come out a few months after the telco's, and with a prettier cover, so people actually discard the official phone book
Corollary to Moore's Law: The IQ of new computer owners is declining.
I know someone who, as a hobby, likes to drive around verifying the Los Angeles Thomas Guide maps© He's found some inaccuracies©
I've heard that creators of dictionaries also do this, but that's hearsay©
For once, using my rotary phone pays off!
--- At my sig, unleash hell.
I have had my phone number for umm.. a good 19 years (had an extra digit put on it after AUSTEL put out 8 digit phone numbers).
I have been dialing my home number making this melody even before this copyright came about. In fact, Telstra who issued me my phone number created the sequence for me to dial.
Now I feel that I should sue them for stealing my melody for which I am sure I created before they did. I can prove this. Better still, Telstra could have a better case to sue.
"The real unitron has Slashdot ID 5733, but doesn't rate an impostor."
I've seen this hundreds of times, but what the hell does it mean?
My phone number in 1980 when that song was big was an anagram of Jenny's number. I always wondered if I would get a call from some dyslexic rock fan.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Tell me more about the computer and database that is keeping track of 100 billion of these.
What about "prior use?" I was using my number long before it was copyrighted. Of course, this could prevent any NEW numbers (er.. compositions, good greif) from being used.
:-)
Also, I never dial just 10 digits. I always dial an extra digit or two at the end. That way I skirt the copyright, and get to be creative at the same time!
Now, ISDN afaik uses a dialtone protocol. Does this use DTMF tones too? If that is not the case, I can safely dial any number from my home telephone. (Come to think of it, won't this apply to cellular phones to,using the GSM protocol to carry the numbers?
It identifies the "unitron" user as ID 5733, thereby reminding you that anyone with an ID other than 5733 is NOT the user "unitron".
It then goes on to say that there is absolutely no point in becoming a "unitron" imposter (by, say, calling yourself "unitr0n"), because "unitron" just evolved past the primordial soup stage yesterday.
Look in your modem book, and you'll see that there are actually 16 pairs of DTMF "sounds", not 10.
I'm not sure how the A,B,C,D tones are used on POTS, but on the US Military's Autovon phone network, there are sets with buttons that "do" those tones that let them place various levels of calls, i.e., the commander of Central Command will have a phone with the "override all" button (along with the other 3) so he will always be able to initiate a call on autovon. The sergeant at the motor pool, well, the only Autovon phone he can access is in the company clerk's office, and it looks like any other regular POTS phone set (0-9,#,*).
And that will undoubtedly be their problem. Since Bell Labs developed this many many years ago, one might first check to see if they've patented those two tone combinations previously, at least for the purposes of switching/dialing.
Hmm. .
ISDN = I Still Don't Know
> it is impossible to copyright a word, phrase, note, or chord
So... it would be impossible to copyright the word Illustrater? somebody tell adobe that.
I'm not a lawyer but I used to date a girl in law school, so obviously I know what I'm talking about
But doesn't previous use negate copyright claims like these? For example a company that copyrights an integral part of another companies product that wasn't copyrighted. I believe that the copyright claim will fall apart (luckily) if the company that originally used it proves prior use.
I totally understand that this is an excercise in mocking the absurd state of copyright laws and use, but I think these are totally useless in a serious excercise of the absurd.
Several other people have stated that music is copyrighted based on the notes, pitch and tempo, so maybe a better example would be to copyright 100,000,000,000 combinations of notes (millions of monkies at millions of typewriters....). With that many your bound to find one or two that occur in works created after the copyright is obtained. If just 2 of the 100,000,000,000 combinations stand up to the interpretation of copyright laws you have a winning argument. Then again this is all contingent on luck and my first comment about previous use.
-- Button up, your ignorance is showing
Surely if you hold down one number for a bit longer, or leave a shorter/longer gap between some of the numbers, this doesn't exactly match what they've copyrighted which means it's ok!
Of course it would. Adobe has a trademark, which is quite different (for one thing, they lose it if they don't defend it).
Why can't you see that this is a hoax? Is it really that difficult to find out?
You can query that number finding thingie with everything. It will always print that the number is licensed, even if you just enter some letters...
my 0.02
Nifty! Now excuse me, I'm going to copyright all those combinations BACKWARDS!
Hmm, Ordinance Survey maps in the UK are pretty accurate (within date limitations - places change, etc).
Then again, you have to pay for them - the problems of self-funded Government departments.
Actually, thinking about it, I wouldn't be too surprised if they don't intentional inaccuracies - putting a small cross marked 'Nuclear Bunker here' with the correct elevation and grid position would tend to assist nasty people that don't like us perhaps a little too much.
~Stuart
One word: prior art.
Most, if not all phone number is use today have been dialed by someone in the past. This means that there is a prior art case for each phone number in their portefolio. I don't think anyone will be foolish enough to take this joke to court.
-- Please put this in your sig if you think
This equals patenting folk music. The patent should have been rejected.
you know, due to overflow your sleep will only last approx 219 years, not the 7,500,000 years intended.
GSM mobiles don't use DTMF or VF tones to dial within their own network, it's done with real data, I believe. But the network owners do use DTMF or VF to communicate into some other networks and the PSTN. These people will have to get around the problem. I love the whole concept, more power to them...
In Australia, it is against the law to incite (or even encourage) someone to commit a crime.
:)
;-)
so giving someone a phone number to call, could land you in jail!
And of course, there is all that scope for contributory liability (the whitepages is a manual
on how to reproduce copyrighted material
Telstra (phone company) sells you the instrument to reproduce their opus materials, etc
I wonder if the dual pitch mechanism could be considered complex enough to be treated at a "effective copyright control mechanism"
excellent!
Could someone plz upload 1-800-flowers to Napster for me? Will trade for almost any of the "Help, I am stuck in a freezer, save me!" songs from Short Circuit 2. (except "Broadway", I hate that friggin song.)
k plz thx
No SIG for you!
Thanks to this article, now I know longer regret being a social outcast and not being able to get any girl's phone number in my blackbook. I can't wait until those "cool" kids are arrested and fined for the dirty pirates they are.
You die too easily.
When they play the whole thing with a full orchestra.
Don't forget to let us know how you think these URLs, (includes year's free hosting), should be used. If we agree, we'll give IT to you. Thanks for the positive interest so far.
djia hear, fud is dead? ITs all good gnus from now on.
In that case:
Can they register the tones as trademarks?
Don't check your number. They could be going directly to a database and you could end up being called by all types of telemarketers. Hey, its a possibility.
This is well-settled. No copyright is possible.
The Supreme Court held in Feist that the white pages do not meet the burden of originality, and therefore cannot be protected by Copyright.
The word, "Science," as used in the Patent and Copyright Clause, has nothing to do with "scientific research."
"Science" refers to the archaic meaning of literary technique, or, the "craft of writing." "Useful Arts" refers to patentable technology.
Too bad we can't call the RIAA - their phone and fax numbers - 775-0101 and 775-7523 - are copyrighted by these guys.
What about Prior Art?
I've been playing my home and business phone number for years, and these guys have added it to their composition!
While having an actual copyright gives you more legal recourse, as soon as you create a piece of art it's yours. I can easily prove that I wrote some of the 'music' that's in this piece years ago.
Maybe I'll sue them.
:)
Except that you can't copyright something that doesn't have "signficant creative effort", and I doubt if either the 16 DTMF codes nor the possible dialings sequences from them qualify.
*grins*
I am indeed quite anal, or at least that's what some people say; however, it seems to me that the first implementation of DTMF most likely could provide compelling evidence that they were the original performers of the melodies that have been copyrighted. In fact, I'd be willing to believe that routine testing for telco switches includes testing with some large portion of that address space.
Of course, it seems simpler to just turn off the dial-time speaker on your phone (pardon, not using digital?). It seems kind of unlikely that a musical copyright could be held on a string of digits, even if it was granted on the musical arrangement that is 'played' by the DTMF switching.
This suggest a whole new business/income model. Perhaps we should patent it before some corporate monster does
1) Copyright your number, including dial tone.
2) Allways complete your phone-number on forms, and request for information. Include notification that use of your number is by licence only.
3) Receive call(s).
4) Charge abusers licence fee.
As someone who up until recently developed DTMF Rx/Tx and dial tone generation software, can I expect these guys to come knocking (ringing?) on my door?
I knew I should have copyrighted middle C when I had the chance. That way every paino tuner in the world would owe me royalties.
Actually there's only 8 tones, 4 for the rows and 4 for the columns making 16 possible combinations.
There's a 4th column to the right labeled ABCD. Most phones don't have this column but telephone test equipment does.
As a side note, many Hayes compatible modems will produce the tones for the ABCD keys if you send one of these letters in the dialing string. (The dialing string "ATTD 1234567890#*ABCD" will produce all 16 tones)
Beta sux! Join the Slashcott! http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4760465&cid=46173047
ok, the way these guys are thinking, your phone is an "instrument", and the phone # melody is the "song". However, simply dialing my phone in my house does not violate copyright law. Copyright law involves COPYING. While the tones are transmitted to wherever it goes, it is not distributed. Wherever it goes, it does not get copied. And since this is only between 2 parties, this is not technically a performance (am i violating copyright law when i'm playing stairway to heaven on my guitar in front of a couple friends?). Sorry, but this does not stop telemarketers in any way, unless you copyright the #'s
Got Freedom?
Thinking?
No. See Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service Company, Inc. 916 F.2d 718 (CA 10 1990). In simple, it says that the white pages - the lists of names and phone numbers - can't be copyrighted.
I believe there was a lawsuit several years ago about copying lists of names and phone numbers to make your own phone book.
And it turned out to be legal, however only copying the information is legal, copying the formatting (probably ads as well) is not.
Need a Catering Connection
no one can stop the mt. washington bank mortgage department from cold calling for refinancing... they're just too powerful!!
As a kid my job on family trips was to read the map and figure out where the next turn, gas station, etc. was. My father drove and my mother's eyesight wasn't good enough to read the maps well. I remember one trip when my father asked me how far to the next town (he was looking for a gas station). I checked and it was something like 8 miles. 8 miles passed and no town. Then 10 and still no town. My father got mad, said I wasn't doing a very good job of navigating , pulled the car over and ripped the map out of my hands. He studied it for a few minutes as we all sat in silence. Finally he said, "Either this damn cheap map is wrong or they moved the town." Years later I found out about the "markers" that mapmakers put in to insure that their works aren't copied.
When I moved to where I live now I was given a map of the area by my employer. I noticed one day that there was a street marked "PUD Drive." I thought that one was pretty funny at the time. Over the next few years I noticed it on a lot of maps from many different companies. One Saturday, with nothing to do, I drove over to PUD drive and found... NOTHING! It didn't exist!
Curious, I went to the city planner's office the next Monday and asked about it. With a sigh the secretary told me they get this all the time. PUD stood for "Planned Urban Development" and some idiot mapmaker years earlier had copied it as though it was the name of a street and it ended up on all succeeding maps thereafter.
Pud Drive was on Mapquest as recently as 2 years ago when I sent them an email telling them about it along with several other errors in their maps (like one-way streets going the wrong way and exits that no longer existed). I never heard back from them but I just went there now and noticed they have corrected their maps to implement (most of) the changes I sent them. In fact, I can't find a PUD on any city I try, and there used to be a lot of them on Mapquest.
Beta sux! Join the Slashcott! http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4760465&cid=46173047
You are wrong. Phone listings are not subject to copyright. The presentation/ads/other stuff in the phone book might be, but the listings are not.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
There was an article in the LA Weekly 10-15 years ago describing how Thomas Bros. make their maps -- the deliberate inacurracies, sometimes called "copyright bugs", were mentioned.
IIRC, at one time, they offered some kind of prize to anyone who reported some magic number of such bugs.
Aside from that, to register music, doesn't that also include rhythm of the music? So theoretically if this were inforcable, if I played it to a different beat, wouldn't that be a totally different tune? (Hey, just look at modern pop/rock, they do it all the time, and don't get me started on rap, but at least they usually liscense their samplings of classics)
--- I used to moderate, then I read the -1 articles and decided having to filter through them was not worth it.
1) There is so many sounds to capture under copyright! A virtual waterfall! Perhaps a John Cage (R) type of musical composition can be made of computer keyboard clicks, clacks, chirps, POST beeps, computer fan sounds, startup and shutdown noices, noises associated with insertion and removal of various media, all manner of power switches, battery compartment opening and closings, stylus scratchings, changes in power levels, brown out and black out and power restore noises, microphone/speaker feedback noises, pops and whistles, touch screen manipulation sounds like finger tip dragging, monitor voltage pops, various plug insertions & removal, printer warm up sounds, printer printing sounds, paper jams, and of course the swishing of mice balls rolling on pads, all manner of static discharges, along with the visuals for LED flashes. Let's not overlook the sound of vacuum cleaners going over computer cables and eating small screws and little lumps of solder, and of fingers caught in crimpers. This should result in a much quieter world and prevent lawyers from ever using computers again.
2) Now I was reluctant to share this next idea, but I can't control myself anymore. Would someone friendly to OSS please patent the 'cursor' and 'scrolling' and assign it to Richard Stallman for GPL? That should cause all computer systems to fall under GPL...and we can start planning for a Happy Halloween! By Microsoft's legal theory, this should make all software coded via a cursor enabled program fall under GPL.
3. This takes really big thinking, bigger than the thoughts behind the above. Patent, Trademark and Copyright "Copy as Original Performance". Normally playback is assumed to be a copy, unless (heh, heh, heh!) we can get this construed as performance art in and of itself. We merely have to show a playback differs from original and the added component of additional human expression and creativity introduced makes it original...not derivative. Somehow we'd need to make the backdrop under which mimicry is performed stand out as creative and evolutionarily significant, like the deceptive bugs and animals in the world that mimic much deadlier or more nasty tasting critters.
4) If time permits, copyright sounds of water falling on rocks, sand, leaves, etc., snow landing on ice, heavy breathing, noises human bodies make solo and in groups of two or more, ...all sounds of nature...that way ads can't use them without paying royalties.
5) Slashdot should be able to copyright or trademark 'Slashdotted', 'Moderated up/down', 'Post Comment', 'Slashdot effect'....
6) Print preview button
If they are trying to patent the METHOD of
generation of sequences of notes, everything is
OK. I'm not reproducing their method dialing a number.
If they are claiming copyright for the actual sequences,
they have to register them all, either in separate statements, or all together,
on a large piece of paper. I think it is illegal to claim copyright on something that is not published somehow (correct me if I am wrong).
So, they must at least place the whole list at their site. 10^11 bytes, you say ?
I have a friend who trademarked the phrase "freedom of expression."
He then invented a fake lawsuit over the phrase, which he got a newspaper in Massachusetts (I forget which) to cover.
When the paper found out that the lawsuit was a hoax, they were, understandably, pissed.
Same friend wrote them a letter asking if he could use the article on the lawsuit in his doctoral thesis.
They wrote him back, invoked copyright ('cause they were pissed), and said no way can you use that article.
So he used the letter they wrote him. It now serves as the introduction to his thesis.
True story. He now teaches communications at the University of Iowa.
Visit sunny Knowumsayin.com, home of the pork shirt.
now, i'm ok with not calling my house, but you can be sure that the next time i get a call from a tele-marketer, i'll ask to make sure they've cleared usage with magnus-opus before dailing.
I'm sure that someone out there has patented ROT13 and XOR. Why not patent ROT14? Even better, why not patent ROT26? Then you could sue everyone!
I think that Dmitry guy is still being held...
Yeah, this one gets the "most uninformed /. of the year" award.
-Elendale
IANAT (I Am Not A Troll)
I think most late-model modems will translate the letters to numbers for youe, IE ABC=2,DEF=3, on the idea that people are typeing out 1-800-MYISP etc etc.
...The people who are "playing" the melody are the people who woule be calling that number.. not the person who happens to be at the recieving end
Hey, all those tv commercials (call 1800 collect) use the dial tone in their commercials. that's clear infringement!
I can attest to the fact that this is still being done. I needed an outline of South Carolina for a recent web project, and had to go through several clip-art map collections to find one that was reasonably accurate. Most maps I found left out significant portions of the state (e.g. the entire upper 1/3). I can only guess that the mapmakers thought SC was unimportant enough to serve as the digital watermark for their clip-art map collection.
Your fantasies contain the seeds of important concepts.
If numbers cannot be copyrighted..
and MP3s are just a series of numbers..
therefore..
MP3s are made of wood!
Lets see 1x10^10 * (7 bytes per telephone number ) equals about 700 gigabytes of storage of all the numbers. They must have a great server to look up the numbers I tried so fast. Its amazing that they even have 20 digit numbers stored. I you could fit 160 phone numbers on a page of paper you would only need 62 million sheets (6 years to print on a fast printer) of paper or 125000 reems. I would have liked to see the hard copy of that application. Obviously they just have an program that responds yes to every number you give it and plays an annoying little ditty. Then maybe it logs that number somewhere - but they did not generate all these numbers. They can copyright their program but not the numbers(songs) - since the viewers are actually generating them. Someone in that copyright office should get spanked.
The copyright is cannot be enforced. First of all, it requires that Magnum Opus copyright all combinations of tone lengths for all combinations. In other words, because Magnum Opus has copyrighted a phone number (555-1212) in chordal quarter notes, all I have to do is play a half note for the last (or first or third... ) digit.
I still think it would be worth it to get at telemarketers. ("Would you like to buy life insurance?" "Sure, I'll have plenty of money after you pay me the $100,000 US for playing my symphony. You should've bought a performance license.")
On that note, does that mean that my email address can be copyrighted? Does that mean I can sue spammers for using my email address without permission?
Seriously, according to this page on the Franklin Pierce Law Center's website, the copyright is unenforcable on the face of it because it violates the "Fair Use" portion of copyright law. That part states:
Fair use.
Fair use is one of the most important, and least clear cut, limits to copyright. It permits some use of others' works even without approval. But when? Words like "fair" or "reasonable" cannot be precisely defined, but here are a few benchmarks.
Uses that advance public interests such as criticism, education or scholarship are favored -- particularly if little of another's work is copied. Uses that generate income or interfere with a copyright owner's income are not. Fairness also means crediting original artists or authors. (A teacher who copied, without credit, much of another's course materials was found to infringe.)
Commercial uses of another's work are also disfavored. For example, anyone who uses, without explicit permission, others' work to suggest that they endorse some commercial product is asking for trouble! Yet, not all commercial uses are forbidden. Most magazines and newspapers are operated for profit; that they are not automatically precluded from fair use has been made clear by the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Dopester
"Yes, I'm a Karma Whore, but I'm doing it to pay my way through school."
Copyright all the notes in music so we can sue the greedy record labels for maiming Napster!
**********
If it says "Troll" on this post,
I successfully annoyed a nerd herd!
Back in '91 I claimed copyright on the sequence:
123456789101112131415161718192021...
All that stopped me from suing was the fair use exemptions --- 5% of infinity is quite a lot...
Of course these days the law doesn't respect fair use so I might be on a winner.
Dude. They'd be 'sampling'. So not only would they owe a royalty for the use of the original 'phone number' but a fee to Puff 'Sean Diddy' Daddy for licensing his buisness method patent.
--Jimmy has fancy plans; and pants to match.
OMG! I just saw my phone melody MP3 on Napster!
Unlimited growth == Cancer.
I believe that he's poking fun at Bruce Perens' old .sig, which read something like "The real Bruce Perens has slashdot ID 17563, anyone else is an imposter" (or whatever his ID really is).
The office where you can get those from is in Denver, CO. Just get yourself in the neighborhood of 6th Avenue and Kipling. You absolutely cannot miss it. I went down one day just for the fun of it and picked up a complete set of (very nice) maps of Mars for $9. The joy of publicly-funded research results actually being available to the public!
The problem is, US copyright law looks at the originality of a work. In that sense, the numbers in a phone book do not have a very strong copyright interest to them but the other original content (ie coupons, apartment guides, etc) or the way the data are laid out or typefaced CAN be copyrighted and protected.
El Karma: excelente(principalmente la suma de moderación hecha a los comentarios de los usuarios)
You just wait until P. Diddy starts sampling these tunes.
I bet He buys J-Lo's new number.
We Apprentice Developers and Designers
I know this if flame bait, but these guys are full of crap...they can come down here and watch me dial my damn phone number all day long
You know what...i'm copyright the thread patterns in underware...everyone who wears underwear must pay me $100 a day to wear underwear.
/p
If this is true, I guess its illegal to hum or whistle a copyrighted song. In fact, it would be illegal to sing along with a song in your car. I guess I can't do that any more either. And I had just got through being able to speed-whistle all my friends phone numbers.
Under Canadian copyright law, if I create something, then I have the copyright on it. As long as I can prove I did it before someone else I don't even have to register it. :)
So any phone number (melody) I might have dialed on my touch tone phone 15 years ago, is already in copyright and therefore these bastards are infringing on my rights as a composer as well!
Given that there are at least 100billion combinations, and the weight of paper is about 1 pound per hundred sheets, we're talking about a billion pounds of paperwork filed, assuming one sheet per copyright. And according to CNN, the mass of the debris of the WTC is 2 billion pounds. So we're talking about the mass of one of the towers worth of paperwork. This obviously is a fraud and even if they were to start work printing paperwork at 1000 pages/minute, it would take 100million minutes, which is just over 190 years. So I think we're safe for now, at least until they get your phone number filed.
Microsoft has decided to patent ones and zeros. http://www.theonion.com/onion3311/microsoftpatents .html
grep >= ! == $your
That is 16^12! A quick calculation shows 16^12 to be 281,474,976,710,656 melodies. It would take centuries to generate and store that many 'melodies'...just to store them would take up thousands of terabytes (unless you specified some sort of range, but that defeats the reason for the 'melody' model).
I'm not even going to go into the math of 'adding modules together'....Geez. Even if they only had a trillion combinations, we still shouldn't be quaking in our boots; phone switching relays still connect to a 'normal' number even if you add other numbers to the end, or dialing a number prefix like '*70'(disable call waiting) before dialing, (ex: "*701-800-DIE-DMCA12425261#*##") and that makes for an original work that I'm sure they don't have copyrighted
"Witty Phrase."
where the Automobile Association (AA) was found guilty of copying maps produced by the Ordnance Survey, and fined £20million goes to prove that this still happens, as it was used to prove that the offence had taken place.
Sorry, how long can you morn the dead. On a global scale the deaths of 6000+ is rare but not outstanding. The ONLY things that have made this news worthy for this long a period of time is that it was done by the hand-of -man and that it happened in the USA. Anywhere else in the world and this would be old news and forgotten. Americans KILL 40,000+ fellow Americans per year, talk about priorities!
Microsoft have licensed the tones for thier support line numbers. The cost will be added into the support costs and made retroactive for 10 years.
No, recordings of songs are copyrighted. That's why Napster got shut down.
Performances aren't copyrighted. So cover songs are legal since you are recreating a performance of a song. It's illegal for them to copy the lyrics, which is why you'll rarely, if ever, see the lyrics to a cover song in the liner notes of an album (check it out if you don't believe me). But it's fine to play someone else's song since you're recreating a performance.
IANAL (yet), but I do work at one of the top IP firms in the US, so I'm pretty confident that I've gotten accurate information on this.
If a million monkeys type out the source code to MS Office, Microsoft can't sue.
They'll sue for theft of business method!
What time is it/will be over there? Check with my iPhone app!
Congratulations, it *is* a gentle and friendly satire (with a little self-deprecating humor thrown in) of Bruce's old sig, which he instituted a while back due to the confusion caused when others created user accounts with extremely similar names with an easily overlooked difference, such as appending a period, and then proceeded to post stuff that the real Bruce never would. Sort of like our current Cmdr Taco on, which comes up as "Cmdr Taco on on 09:27 AM September 10th, 2001" where the second "on" is easily overlooked if you don't expect it. I made up the time and day in that example. They have no particular significance, I just didn't feel like going to the trouble of hunting up some troll's real posting.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
"Primordial Soup, it's what's for dinner!"
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
I gotta quit posting so much. Starting tomorrow. Or right after the weekend. Anyway, real soon now.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Here in Australia, we use eight digit numbers (with a non-compulsory two digit area code) for standard land lines. You can call pretty much anywhere in your home state by dialing only eight digits. Cellular phones have six digit numbers following four digit area codes, which must be dialed, thus creating ten digit numbers.
In interesting alternative news, did you know that Telstra (Australian telecomunications monopolist) has, for at least the last thirty years, laid claim to the copyright on visually reproducing a phone number.
That's right, when you give a cheque to Yellow Pages, in Australia, they then pass on 80% of that to Telstra for the priveledge of printing Telstra's intellectual property.
Is this pointless enough to get modded up?
Get the Hell off my planet, you slimy mobster Bush!
a copyrighted number. I entered:
134123174892718957182751275812
and it said it was an Opus Number.
No one ever says, 'I can't read that ASCII E-mail you sent me.'
When this story was published I sent an email off to the ACA (Australian Communications Authority) asking if they could comment on the issue and got the following email reply.
Dear Sir,
Thank-you for referring the issue below to the ACA. I have sought advice
from our Central Administration in Melbourne and will advise when I have a
definitive answer. In the interim, I suspect that the answer will be that
the copyrighting of DTMF tones as melodies can only have any effect on their
use as part of a public musical performance. I believe it to be highly
unlikely that music copy right laws have any application to the use of DTMF
tones as electronic codes for the operation of the Public Switched Telephone
Network.
Regards, Johnk
And I should know! I live on one of those streets that have been mislabled. We were wondering why it was so hard to get pizza, then we looked at our King County Thomas Guide (one of the more popular books, and usually very good at that)... and our street is totally mislabled!
You quitting proves that the karma kap worked. The most annoying of the whores shut up. --CmdrTaco
i'm thinkin this is a hoax...
try typing in something like "you monkey" and have it search. it'll say a match was found even though there is no music that can go along with "you monkey".
It's a prank, mmkay? A *prank.* They're doing it to give the almighty finger to the kind of capitalist twits who think they can get away with copyrighting stuff like the human genome.
Stop bitching, it'll never be a reality.