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Copyright Claimed on Telephone Tones

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the ode-to-dtmf dept.

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.

7 of 495 comments (clear)

  1. Haiku by 575 · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Walk to hospital...
    Tones copyright Microsoft
    Can't call 911

    1. Re:Haiku by 575 · · Score: 1, Offtopic

      Haiku are quite old
      I've bastardized ancient art
      Thanks for noticing

    2. Re:Haiku by 575 · · Score: 1, Offtopic

      Friend, this is Slashdot:
      Who needs justification
      To slam Microsoft?

  2. Does this mean.... by CmdrMightyTaco · · Score: 0, Offtopic
    ...we can stop the scourge of late-night porn line infomercials if someone else owns the copyright?

    (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."
  3. from 907 it gives you an unused extension by human+bean · · Score: 1, Offtopic
    on a switch in Chalkyitsik.


    No Jenny there.

    --

    *whup* "Get along, little electrons. Heeyah!"

  4. Re:Copyright does not squash other independant wor by krogoth · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    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.
  5. Re:Thats it, time to take action by Radiantal · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    This is absolutely f'ing absurd! Next they will be slappin copyrights on a series of fart noises coming out of every fat person's ass, including my own!
    There are two problems that I see with this, 2 guys who think they're more intelligent than anyone on the face of this earth and they're f*cking blood sucking lawyers who are so damned money hungry and stupid to allow something like this to materialize.
    Down with LAWYERS!