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Judge Rules Pi-Based Music Is Non-Copyrightable
New submitter AnalogDiehard writes "A copyright case alleging infringement of a 1992 Lars Erickson song 'The Pi Symphony' by Michael John Blake's 'What Pi Sounds Like' was dismissed by U.S. District Court Judge Michael H. Simon. Both pieces were conceived by assigning numbers to musical notes, then deriving a melody based on the pattern defined by a finite set of numbers in Pi. Judge Simon wrote in his legal opinion, intentionally announced on Pi day (3/14), that 'Pi is a non-copyrightable fact.' While the Judge did not invalidate the Erickson copyright, he ruled that 'Mr. Erickson may not use his copyright to stop others from employing this particular pattern of musical notes.' The judge further ruled that the two pieces were not sufficiently similar — for instance, its harmonies, structure and cadence are all different."
If we could just get this same judge, who obviously has some common sense and a critical eye for detail, to rule on a few other copyright cases, we might be able to right this severely listing ship....
I don't want to fire in the old cliché of "OMG A SENSIBLE COURT DECISION", but it's nice to see common sense employed.
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
I don't see how this should be any different? I remember seeing fractal music a while back.. that shouldn't be copyrightable either? Im curious.
Of course pi-based music is copyrightable. TFA even states explicitly: "That doesn't mean Erickson's copyright is invalid." Both Erickson and Blake retain copyright over their respective songs, which (other than both being based off pi) are distinct. What is not copyrightable is the idea of basing a song off pi. The title should have read "Judge Rules Pi Is Non-Copyrightable."
The entire dispute was completely irrational!
licet differant, aequabitur
PI not IP
A long long time ago
I can still remember how
That number used to make me smile
And I knew if I had my chance
That I could make those lawyers dance
And maybe they'd be happy for a while
But March 14th made me shiver
With every digit I'd deliver
Bad news in the courtroom
I couldn't take one more suit
I can't remember if I cried
When I read the judges opines
But something touched me deep inside
The day the copyright died.
Bye, bye to copyrighted Pi
Drove my Chevy to the courthouse where the lawyers would fight
But them good ole boys were thinking common sense was all right
Singin' this'll be the day that I die
This'll be the day that I die
John
Because the choice of where to start has infinite possibility and how to assign the digits is a creative choice, it makes sense to allow copyrights on pi-based. The judge correctly limited his ruling. I would treat any such copyrights as a performance of public domain works.
Actually, I see this as a direct response to that claim (and you beat me to the punch by a minute or two).
Basically, it doesn't work that way: by claiming that music derived from pi isn't copyrightable, it creates a distinction between music that isn't, and music that is, derived from pi. Even though the melody could be found somewhere in pi, it wasn't derived from pi; it was the result of an artist's creativity.
Similarly, numbers aren't copyrightable, but software is (in most countries) and software is just a big number, so what gives? The reasoning is the same: you could get that number from a giant random number generator, but the person who developed the software didn't, and that's why they're able to copyright it.
So PI is french for IP or more correctly la propriété intellectuelle
Not every infinitely long random number contains every possible pattern. Consider an infinitely long sequence of digits. Now drop all '1's from the sequence. You still have an infinitely long series of random digits, in that knowing previous digits doesn't help you predict future digits. However, this infinite random sequence does not contain every possible pattern.
Whether this applies to pi or not, I have no idea.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
A book, a song, a program, a widget, hell YOU, can all be represented by a large enough number.
The point is whether there's enough "original creativity" in developing that bignum to warrant protection. Some things should be protected, some should not. We can argue all day about what should be protected, how long that protection should last and what the punishment for violating those protections should be. My answers, even as both a patent and copyright holder, are less, less, and less.
But to argue that simply because something can be represented as just a number means it shouldn't be protected is ridiculous.
I void warranties.
Yeah but the French do everything backwards. Their word for "states" is "etats".
William of Ockham had no beard. The most likely explanation is that it was chewed off by squirrels every morning.
Considering that pi represented as a decimal number is infinitely long, it would eventually contain the encoding for every song in existence.
Actually, that does not necessarily follow.
It's not known whether pi contains every finite-length sequence in its decimal expansion (although most people believe it to be true). In fact, our knowledge is even worse than that (from Wikipedia):
It is for instance unknown whether sqrt(2), pi, ln(2) or e is normal (but all of them are strongly conjectured to be normal, because of some empirical evidence). It is not even known whether all digits occur infinitely often in the decimal expansions of those constants.
Here's some more discussion about that: http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/96632/do-the-digits-of-pi-contain-every-possible-finite-length-digit-sequence
This means that is has just become VERY important for mathematicians to figure out whether PI is normal (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_number)
(TL;DR version: a normal number is one in which every sequence of digits occurs)
You see, if every sequence occurs in PI, this actually means that no sequence is copyrightable, abolishing copyright right away :)
No kitty, this is my pot pie!
His problem was that he used copyright law to protect his work. He should have patented a method of assigning values to various musical notations and using a mathematical generator based on the value of Pi to construct a melody. That way, given the crazy patent system, his work would be protected because anybody else would violate his patent.
I don't think your analogy works the way you think it does. When you drop all the 1's from the sequence, you are limiting in scope (for lack of a better term) the subset of possible sequences so that they no longer have 1 in them. This doesn't prove the impossibility of containing every possible pattern when you similarly apply the same condition (ie, every pattern that doesn't contain a 1). Because Pi is irrational, my intuition tells me it would contain the encoding for every song.
Everyone knows music based on Tau is better.
My old sig was REALLY stoopid.
When you drop all the 1's from the sequence, you are limiting in scope (for lack of a better term) the subset of possible sequences so that they no longer have 1 in them.
Yes, that's exactly what I'm doing. This proves that random sequences don't necessarily contain all finite sequences.
This doesn't prove the impossibility of containing every possible pattern when you similarly apply the same condition (ie, every pattern that doesn't contain a 1).
Why would you do that? The point is that there exists at least one infinite random sequence that does not contain at least one finite sequence. The fact that there are other finite sequences that are in the infinite random sequence is irrelevant.
Because Pi is irrational, my intuition tells me it would contain the encoding for every song.
My example proves your intuition wrong. It doesn't prove that pi fails to contain the encoding for every song. But it does prove that irrationality is not sufficient to support that claim.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Pi is for losers. Music based on Euler's number, now those are symphonies. Oh, and if I catch one of you pirating thieves trying to steal my Euler tune, I'm gonna get all kinds of ACTA on your asses.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Probably worth adding that the distribution of digits in pi appears not to be significantly different from the uniform distribution.
Dur? Isn't it common for everyone to want their slice of the Pi?
*blames lack of coffee for inability to resist bad pun
what the judge said is taking an idea (begin with Pi encode using THIS MAPPING to create THIS SONG) can not be copywritten but your particular version can be copywritten.
so A uses THIS MAPPING to create THIS SONG and sells it
then
B uses THAT MAPPING to create THAT SONG and sells it
A can not Sue B
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Have you heard the new one based on phi? I hear every note is pure gold.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
If only someone could prove that pi is a normal number, then we could argue that pi contains any finite length of e. Not only that, all finite length songs would be noncopyrightable. The only song you could claim was original is the one that never ends!