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Encoding DNA as Music for Copyrighting?
superposed writes "A Silicon Valley executive is proposing that biotech companies could improve on the U.S.'s 20-year patent protection for DNA sequences by encoding them as digital music files (Lame Free Registration required) and using copyright protection, which can last up to 100 years. Right now this is just a suggestion, and for what it's worth, the original author of some of the DNA-to-music software thinks its a bad idea. But it's still disturbing somehow."
Cool hack! Will they also start suing (the heirs of) Paul McCartney if it retrospectively turns out that some of his songs encode for some expensive gene?
Pushin' 'n dealin', shovin' 'n stealin'
If a program is used to generate music, and the situation is further complicated by seeding the program with a DNA sequence, who has actually composed the music, and who, therefore is actually entitled to receive a copyright for it?
The author of the program? The person or plant/animal from whom the DNA sequence was extracted? Or the person who merely loaded the DNA info and clicked the button?
Numerous programs have been created that create music -- some in the style of a specified composer. It might be worth finding how the copyright issue were handled on the output of these programs.
In either case, it strikes me as clearly nonsensicle for the user of an application to be permitted to copyright the output of a program where the program's output is determined without consequential input from the user, and in this case, the user is not performing any creative act by feeding in an already predetermined string of data which is found in nature.
My feeling would be that if anyone has a right to the copyright of the output of this program, it would be the program's author, not the user.
I have a degree in music theory and composition, and this sort of arrangement is not very much different than much of the "avant guard" work produced in the 20th century -- i.e. composers like Stockhausen, Babbit, Reich, Cage, et alii, often were more concerned with the *methodology* they constructed which then generated the musical work, than the actually work itself.
In other words, in this sort of "post-modern" art music, the act of composing became more about the creation of a methodology (or algorithm) to create a work of art in liue of a common practice, and allowing the resulting work to be partially or totally controlled by the process originally established -- like setting up a system in which samples on tape loops are phase-shifted according to a set of rules, or tossing i-ching coins to randomly produce data that controlls all aspects of the composition.
In light of the history and practice of musical composition in the last century, there is really little doubt that the author of the program should be the only person to have rights to the works output by his program. He has done nothing very different than John Cage -- just substitute tossing the i-ching to generate data with using DNA information which controll the salient aspects of the composition.
The act of composition was in defining the process by which the work was created.
All one has to do is hit the right keys at the right time and the instrument plays itself. - Johann Sebastian Bach
Thats meant to be true but it hasnt stopped a large US corporation sueing a British cancer charity.
What happened was that the charity discovered these two genes that could be used in a test for some form of cancer.
It published its findings and its test. Then this company came along and patents the two genes on both sides of the atlantic.
Currently in america it is charging a hugely inflated price for the test, and they are now sueing the National Health Service, and the charity for supplying it in the UK at cost price.
The whole underlying argument here is whether the patenting of genes is legal. For example in order for something to be patented it has to be something new or an improvement on something that already exists, however if something is already in the public domain it cant be patented.
Seeing as many people around the world already have these genes, then surely they are already in the public domain?
I can represent any digital music (or anything digital for that matter) as a number. Hell, I don't even have to convert it, as its binary representation is already a number (any string of 0's and 1's is a binary number). And since it's a number, it can't be copyrighted. Seems to have as much logic as converting DNA to music for additional patent protection. Sheesh.
For every post, there is an equal and opposite re-post.
Would a DNA sequence encoded as music still be the same work? I'd think it would be a derivative work, contributing no additional protection for the original.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
Don't give up on the idea completely. Maybe you can't copyright your DNA, but your finger prints aren't determined completely by DNA. If they were, identical twins would have identical finger prints. You may have to list your mother as a collaborator on the effort, but I think they qualify as a creative expression of an idea.
-- Spam Wolf, the best spam blocking vaporware yet!
Here's an update -- I used BLADE-ENC to simply encode a publicly available sequence from yeast from NCBI as FASTA into an mp3 formatted file Can I copyright it now?
http://andreas.materns.com
You only need to provide a means of proving that you were the original creator. When someone takes my DNA, and changes it to music they do not hold the copyright to it, even if the write copyright 2002 or whatever. I don't think that it would be too difficuly, given the means, to prove that the DNA was mine to begin with. The person who transformed it into 'music' could get a patent, which would be legally binding, if I couldn't prove that the patent was based on something to which I am the copyright holder.
Perhaps they can own copyright and petent for the actual song, but not my DNA. If they COULD.. it would mean that by making DNA into music, no one could reproduce the DNA as a picture or even program code. But I am not even sure if you can put a patent on a derivative work anyway. Anyone?
So our government can see EXACTLY what kind of ill effects copyright law has on our econemny. Try and put the cure for AIDS or cancer under such a device and watch how fast the government revokes it AND makes it available for everyone else. They almost cut Cipro's exclusive patent short (or did they go through with it?) over the Anthrax problem. Judging from that initial action, The US wouldn't think twice about taking said action further against something that is critical to humanity like the cures I previously mentioned.
Before someone nit picks my response note that the entire 'cure' doesn't have to encoded in DNA but some of the critical parts that make the cure a functional whole could be.
Peter
www.alphalinux.org