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.

Comments

Nice idea, but won't work

[Gorobei]

Copyright is concerned with COPYING work. It does not apply if someone else independently (usually defined as "was not exposed to your work") recreates the thing in question.

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.

Re:Nice idea, but won't work

[Spiral Man]

actually, you are wrong. this is why covers of songs violate copyright law (if you cover them without permision). if i record myself playing a previously writen song, and sell the recording, i am violating copyright law. copyright law was created before recordings were easy to copy, so saying that you are only violating the law if you are distributing copies of the actuall recording is foolish.

recordings of songs arent copyrighted, its the sequence of notes that is being copyrighted. just like they copyrighted a sequence of notes (phone numbers)

Re:Copyright does not squash other independant wor

[charon_on_acheron]

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.

Re:Not what copyright was for.

[stubear]

Actually US copyright law was intended for more than scientific research:

"US Constitution, Article I, Section 8

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries"

Our forefathers felt so strongly about protecting scientific research and useful arts that they granted this right before the right to free speech. That took an amendment to institute.

I agree, however, this is not what copyright was intended for and I doubt this would hold up in court. Obtaining a copyright is easy. Protecting it is more difficult.

321-2333, not 312-2333

[dirtyhippie]

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!"

Re:Copyright does not squash other independant wor

[lazytiger]

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.

You can not copyright a phone book

[werdna]

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.