White Noise Video on YouTube Hit By Five Copyright Claims (bbc.com)

Chris Baraniuk, reporting for BBC: A musician who made a 10-hour long video of continuous white noise -- indistinct electronic hissing -- has said five copyright infringement claims have been made against him. Sebastian Tomczak, who is based in Australia, said he made the video in 2015 and uploaded it to YouTube. The claimants accusing him of infringement include publishers of white noise intended for sleep therapy. "I will be disputing these claims," he told the BBC. In this case, those accusing Mr Tomczak are not demanding the video's removal, but instead the reward of any revenue made from advertising associated with it. Without the claims, Mr Tomczak would receive such revenue himself. "I am intrigued and perplexed that YouTube's automated content ID system will pattern-match white noise with multiple claims," he said.

Comments

White noise can be copied too

[JoeyRox]

The copyright claims are valid if his video copied the white noise audio track from other videos, which can easily be determined by comparing the wave forms.

Re:White noise can be copied too

[admin7087]

Doubtful. There is no expression of a creative idea and the work is also not original. Both are requirements for copyright. Otherwise I could just copyright the word "and" and get my free income for the rest of my life.

Re:White noise can be copied too

[JoeyRox]

Except there are an infinite number of permutations of Gaussian white noise, while there is only one for the word "and".

Re:White noise can be copied too

[cirby]

He's a MIDI and electronic music guy who hand-builds his own tone sources.

He probably has several noise generators of his own already.

Re:White noise can be copied too

[Shoten]

Except there are an infinite number of permutations of Gaussian white noise, while there is only one for the word "and".

Yes, but creativity plays no part in creating any of those permutations. Saying there are infinite numbers of permutations as a defense of a particular variant is like taking a recording of an existing song, changing the pitch of a single note, and then claiming that it's a new song. The courts have already ruled on that concept.

Re:White noise can be copied too

[mopower70]

Except there are five claims against him from four different sources. If the claims are based on copying, then at least three others copied from the exact same source and have filed violation claims based on pilfered content.

Re:White noise can be copied too

[dunkindave]

Except there are five claims against him from four different sources. If the claims are based on copying, then at least three others copied from the exact same source and have filed violation claims based on pilfered content.

Your logic is broken. His work is 10 hours long and each of the five claims could be for different, non-overlapping sections within it, so none of the five need contain any content from another. For example, if I took five songs from five different performers and concatenated them together, all five would have the right to make a copyright claim even though none contain another's work. The claims in this case though are still garbage.

Re:White noise can be copied too

[DickBreath]

You mean copyright infringement.

You can't infringe a copyright that does not exist. White noise is not eligible for copyright protection due to there not being an actual author other than a PRNG, and more importantly that there is no creativity involved in creating it. Copyright is to protect intellectual works. There is already case law that, for example, the facts present in a telephone directory cannot be copyrighted.

Someone who created white noise cannot file a claim against someone else who might actually in fact copy it all, because, the original white noise cannot be copyrighted.

In this case, I think it is automated copyright enforcement bots run amok.

Re: White noise can be copied too

[TuballoyThunder]

White noise != Gaussian White noise has a flat spectrum not shaped like a Gaussian.

Re:White noise can be copied too

[Rob Riggs]

The copyright claims are valid if his video copied the white noise audio track from other videos, which can easily be determined by comparing the wave forms. [Ed: Emphasis mine.]

That is true of uncompressed audio. Once you compress the audio, the noise is going to look pretty much the same. Much of the phase information which is necessary to distinguish one sample from another is gone, and all that is left is the frequency domain which is pretty much the same from one white noise source to another.

Re:White noise can be copied too

[Lije Baley]

"But they were all active in the PRNG scene and frequenters of the PRNG discussion on reddit. The infringer stole a special seed -- 123456789 -- that was known to produce the highest-quality white noise, pushing the brain into enhanced delta-wave activity sooner than noise created with less ingenious seeds."

Re:White noise can be copied too

[CrimsonAvenger]

But if you copy a white noise track created by someone else then that copy is no longer Gaussian relative to the original track - it's instead identical.

Five separate claims against him suggest either that four of the claimants also stole their white noise from the original author (whichever one of the five it was), or they're all full of crap....

Re:White noise can be copied too

[dgatwood]

Actually, works created by random selection without any contribution by a human author are not eligible for copyright protection. It is highly unlikely that white noise could be copyrighted even if you took someone else's white noise.

Re: White noise can be copied too

[Dragonslicer]

George Lucas gets paid every time a company uses the word "droid," TV ads or whatever.

I believe that's a trademark, not copyright.

Re:White noise can be copied too

[king neckbeard]

I'm pretty sure that merely uploading the white noise to youtube would create enough artifacts that it would be a different permutation of white noise.

More importantly, the similarity of all accurately labeled white noise is probably within the scope of Youtube's aggressive content ID system. So, the assumption of direct copying is unfounded.

Also, regarding originality in regards to copyright, it was in contrast to "effort," not "creativity." Feist v. Rural ruled that the white pages phone books were not eligible for copyright because they are not original, even though they took a lot of work. It's an uphill battle arguing that white noise is more original than the phone book.

Re:White noise can be copied too

[Holi]

"Last Monday, millionaire producer, arranger and songwriter Mike Batt made an out-of-court settlement " The first line states this is not a ruling, no precedence is set by an out of court settlement.

Re:White noise can be copied too

[Dragonslicer]

Yes! We first have to determine if these are two independently generated sets of random data.

You can't really call that the first step, since all requirements must be met in order for someone to be liable for copyright infringement. If the first thing you do is show (i.e. convince the judge) that the original isn't eligible for copyright protection, then it doesn't matter if you copied it.

Re:White noise can be copied too

[DaveV1.0]

You shoot yourself in the foot with that argument. If there are an infinite number of permutations, then all versions are either independent works OR all versions are derivative works. As white noise existed as public domain for a long time before anyone got a copyright on any particular version, the burden of proof falls on the supposed copyright holder to show that the work in question violates his work and does not derive from teh public domain work. Good luck with that.

Re:White noise can be copied too

[dgatwood]

Pseudo-random white noise generators certainly have a human contribution and are repeatable.

The problem is that if the human component is just choosing an existing PRNG algorithm, then the whole thing is still a collection of mathematical facts like a phone book, and thus clearly ineligible. There generally has to be at least a minimal creative component for copyright eligibility. That is, after all, the purpose of copyright—to protect creative works of authorship.

Even if someone took the time to hand-seed the PRNG with various values and compare the calming qualities, it would still be an almost laughable stretch to argue that picking that number is sufficiently creative to warrant copyright protection on that particular output of a commonly available algorithm, because other people's computers will randomly choose that particular number once in a while and create that output without the supposed creativity.

Now if somebody creates their own PRNG, that's a different story. Anything below that threshold seems dubious at best. That's not saying that some judge might not misinterpret the copyright act, or that somebody might not decide to sue in hopes of a pre-trial settlement, but the law is IMO pretty clear on the matter. Random noise cannot plausibly be copyrighted, and that is by design. Any abuse of the law that leads to any other interpretation is an indication of a flaw in the law rather than an intended outcome.

Re:White noise can be copied too

[Solandri]

You can't infringe a copyright that does not exist. White noise is not eligible for copyright protection due to there not being an actual author

You're 90% of the way there. The problem here isn't that someone filed a copyright claim against white noise - something that inherently cannot be copyrighted.

The problem is that there is no disincentive, no punishment, for filing bogus copyright claims. The law has put the burden of proof entirely upon the purported infringer to prove he is innocent, none upon the accuser to prove an actual crime was committed.

Re:White noise can be copied too

[AmiMoJo]

And currently they are all stealing his money. Money earned during the claim isn't returned, it stays with the people who made the fraudulent claims.

Re:White noise can be copied too

[SuricouRaven]

No. All white noise *is* the same - it has to have a uniform distribution of frequency intensity. What that site generates isn't white noise, it's colored noise. Off-white noise.

Re:ghtiugupr,ujrciugdriuhdnichneiu _"rzehfr

[Nidi62]

z"'juy-tç_'eyctèçeqytvèe_tyqzç"èedjçtceyjtqzoy"rq_çazé'fyaé_t'béacgrbuserfgsqefcqaxwjàà&çéu"

I'm pretty sure you just insulted some alien's mother and started an interstellar war.

Re:DMCA requires this

[Entrope]

The DMCA does not require this. It requires services like YouTube to implement a takedown process with particular criteria. Google's demonetization and reassignment of ad revenue are its own creations, unmoored from the law's requirements.

what is next - silence?

[kiviQr]

please tell me there are no patents on 10h of silence!

Re:ghtiugupr,ujrciugdriuhdnichneiu _"rzehfr

[Anonymous Coward]

better than having to listen to their poetry

He needs to fight the claims

[eclectro]

The supreme court of the United States has definitively ruled that patentable items can no longer be protected by copyright once the patent has been expired.

Here is an expired patent describing such a device. And there were a number of devices before that. And schematic diagrams and circuits in magazines for white noise/sleep generators long ago.

It's a shame that people are so full of themselves that they think they are truly that special that they somehow made a unique creation here. But actually it's likely worse in that people think they found an easy target and want to take what they can with a bad faith claim.

This is a time where counter claims under the DMCA need to be filed against these bad faith claims and collect damages to help prevent further abuse.

Maybe even make google a co-defendant.

Youtube own provided music

[slazzy]

I was hit with a copyright claim using Youtube own provided music! What really sucks: - I got no notification email to let me know they started stealing all my revenue - The link to contest the action was 404 not found

Re:Youtube own provided music

[Z00L00K]

I just tells you to not add any music to your videos. Many videos that have music added is actually pretty annoying.

Re:Copyrighting the Big Bang

[asylumx]

He gets a 10% royalty....

Re:I'll be putting a copyright on CMBR

[Tablizer]

Scientists didn't create CMBR, God did. I'd like to see Google and music companies sue God.

Re:DMCA requires this

[farble1670]

More precisely, Google's demonetization and reassignment of ad revenue are a kindler and gentler approach that Google negotiated with big content owners.

To be clear, it's a way for Google to keep collecting their cut regardless of who owns the content.

Re:Copyrighting the Big Bang

[Moof123]

Background noise of the universe is 3 Kelvin (K). Your TV antenna sees the ground as much as the air, so sees about 150 K (half from the 300 K ground and half from the 3 K sky). The first amplifier is probably 5-6 dB NF, so it has a noise temperature of about 800 K. So out of the total noise temperature of 950 K, about 0.15% is the background noise of the universe.

Bizzare

[Ol Olsoc]

I can generate white noise easily, and it has been doable for a long, long time. Back in the 1970's I used white noise generators. Now I just use a computer software program to get close, and if I need something better, a card would do.

I think these folks trying to demand that they have the sole ability to utilize white noise might think twice about trying to assert that theory, because they will be set upon like wildebeests crossing a crocodile filled river.

It's pretty much a signal with zero mean and statistically uncorrelated finite variance. If these people can prove that he somehow infringed upon any rights they have they will have to prove that their signal isn't white noise, and prove that he used their non-white noise signal.

This is right up there with the time that Harley Davidson tried to copyright the sound their motorcycles make. They lost that case http://articles.latimes.com/20...