Is there a legal reason for why song identification apps can&#39;t [won&#39;t] identify some foreign music? This question in particular concerns using SoundHound/Shazam/MusixMatch or other commercial song identification apps in the United States to attempt to identify Japanese songs, but this question is conceivably relevant for the identification of non-Japanese songs as well. A little context: the Japanese music industry is quite strict about keeping much of its music inside of its borders (at least digitally). For example, there are a lot of songs that have been released on the Japanese Amazon MP3 or iTunes stores, but they are nowhere to be found in the respective United States stores. The Japanese music industry goes to great lengths to ensure that their music does not end up digitally outside of their country. For example, I have seen many Japanese songs get taken down Youtube very quickly after their uploads due to copyright violations. Why can't commercial song identification apps identify certain songs, especially ones whose access is restricted to Japan? Shazam, etc. use audio fingerprinting to identify songs, so they must keep samples of the songs somewhere. So my conjecture is that they can't identify Japanese songs because they can't legally keep samples due to Japan's policies concerning the digital distribution of their music. Is this true? Or is there some other reason for why commercial song identification apps won't identify foreign songs?
They wouldn't need to keep samples, just the fingerprint. So they could send a guy with a laptop to Japan, download all the songs, fingerprint them, and take the fingerprints back home. It's not a problem, but it would be expensive. I suspect that US and European record companies will make the music available to them for free, otherwise they'd have to pay 20-30 million dollars for 20-30 million songs. The Japanese record companies wouldn't, so while it is technically and legally possible to collect the fingerprints, it would be expensive. And what is the benefit? We are talking here about music that you cannot legally own, that you cannot legally buy after the software recognised it, so there is very little incentive to spend that money.
I can't answer for the Indonesian law specifically. But in general, under most international copyright schemes, a translation is considered a copyrightable work. This means that even if the original work (in this case, the Quran and Hadith) is in the public domain, derivative works based on that public domain work can still be copyrighted by their creators. This includes, for example: A song with lyrics taken from the Quran A play or movie dramatizing stories from the Quran A novel retelling a story from the Quran In all of these cases, the author has built something new, based on the public domain framework. Because they contributed something original, they are entitled to a copyright on their original contribution. They can't stop someone from copying the Quran themselves, but they can stop someone from copying their original work based on the Quran. Most copyright courts--again, I don't know about Indonesia specifically--will treat a translation the same way. A translation is an original work that requires creativity and skill--otherwise Google Translate would work a lot better than it does. Just like a movie based on the Quran, a translation based on the Quran will probably be copyrightable under most, if not all, countries' copyright laws.
My question is, because I am not making any income from the distribution of the game, would the use of the copyrighted music fall under Personal Use? There are some &quot;private use&quot; exemptions in Australian copyright law but they have some fairly narrow conditions. These exemptions are fairly narrow because the point of copyright law is not to prevent you from making money with someone else's intellectual property but to protect the other person's ability to make money with it. If Alice writes a song and Bob distributes it free of charge, Alice loses revenue. Similarly, it is Alice's right to decide whether that song should be included in a freely available open-source software product, and her right to decide whether to allow that use without charge or in exchange for a license fee.
Summary: A transcription of a &quot;faithful&quot; to-the-letter recorded performance of a public domain work is not copyright infringement. However, once there exists original changes to the underlying composition, the transcribers are infringing copyright in all but the most trivial cases and are in for an uphill legal battle. Caveat 1: I'm mainly confining myself to US law due to the statement that this concerns a US-based company. However, there might be legal troubles in some jurisdictions for both the company and transcribers where a perpetual and inheritable moral right of first publication is recognized, like Germany (UrhG § 12). Caveat 2: Outside of copyright law, the company could theoretically gain some limited protection by selling the recording under a contract with a &quot;no transcribing&quot; clause. Since a similar scenario has already been discussed on this site, I am confining myself to the copyright law aspects. 1. What did the transcribers copy? In effect, I believe the transcribers are ultimately copying an underlying arrangement fixed by the recorded performance. That's a bit dense, so let me explain: As you already note, a performance is an artistic rendition of the underlying composition. This performance has separate copyright and may even include various changes to the underlying composition such as dynamic changes, instrumentation changes, tempo changes and various flourishes. I believe that a transcription would mainly reflect the underlying composition plus any such artistic changes to that composition made in the performance. Effectively, from a music theory perspective an underlying composition with artistic changes is the definition of an arrangement. From a legal perspective, an arrangement is copyrightable as a derivative work. Even though it's the performance itself that's being copied from and you haven't specified that there's a separate written arrangement, one can consider an implicit arrangement created by the performance. This implicit arrangement is then documented (i.e. fixed) by the recorded performance. Since a transcription is not capturing the sound itself, but rather the compositional elements of that performance, i.e. the arrangement, I think that it's a useful perspective to consider that the transcribers are copying an arrangement. Even if this way of viewing things turns out not to be 100% accurate, I think it's accurate enough and provides a clearer picture into the underlying legal concepts. I do however admit that some may take issue with this simplification, and it's entirely possible that my answer is completely invalid if this simplification turns out to have no merit. 2. Extent of possible copyright infringement The company which commissioned the orchestra and the recording undoubtedly has copyright on the performance. However, they do not have copyright on the underlying original composition, as that copyright will have long expired in US law. The company can't claim copyright on material which originates in the underlying public domain composition, but can claim copyright for any original contributions made by the arrangement (17 USC 103(b)). As such, I would expect an infringement lawsuit launched by the company will be limited to the portions of the arrangement that differ from the original composition and that are then copied into the transcription. In order to properly determine what those portions are, we would need to compare the transcription, performance, and manuscript together. Since it's the company that is initiating a lawsuit, I would expect that the judge would force them to disclose the manuscript for the proceedings (and instruct the parties that the information is not to leave the courtroom, which is ironic since an NDA is how this whole mess started). This is an exercise that will likely get bogged down in excruciating note-by-note comparisons, but luckily those are factual questions, and I'm just going to discuss the higher-level legal concepts. You also mention there might be &quot;mistakes&quot; included. In theory, copyright protection only applies to creative choices made, I don't believe that mistakes would count. In practice though, this may be difficult to prove and I think the company would argue it was an artistic choice, thus rolling it into the overall changes which constitute the arrangement. However, they might alternatively argue the mistakes are a purposeful copyright trap which can have mixed results. 3. Copyrightability of the arrangement In my opinion, the obvious argument to start with is that the company's arrangement does not qualify for copyright protection. This is a bit of a spectrum. While a full-fledged arrangement is undoubtedly protected as a derivative work, here we are dealing with just portions of an arrangement. Based on the premise of the performance being an accurate representation of a public domain song, I would expect these portions to be minimal. In fact, in the ideal case of the performance being a perfect faithful rendition of the composition, there is no separate underlying arrangement and therefore no copyright to infringe. This would be similar to the case of a photo of public domain art, which gains no copyright due to lack of originality. Copyright requires a &quot;modicum of creativity&quot; as determined in Feist Publications, Inc., v. Rural Telephone Service Co.. Feist also shows the reason copyright traps don't work for defending an originality argument: while you can use traps to prove that copying occurred, they provide no indication as to the actual originality/creativity of the work. The transcribers can thus try to argue that the given portions of the arrangement do not meet this standard for copyright protection. As applied to music, one can consider that the basic building blocks of musical composition are not copyrightable, though large enough combinations of these building blocks do qualify. An examination of this can be found in Marcus Gray v. Katy Perry, where a specific 8-note sequence was found not to be eligible for copyright protection (though do note the case is currently being appealed). The court additionally stated that even if the sequence was copyrightable, such a small sequence would only be found to be infringing if the copying was virtually identical. Since the transcribers are presumably attempting an accurate transcription, this latter point is important to us as it shows that it would not take much copying for copyright infringement to occur. On the other hand, I would expect the differences in the arrangement and original composition might be scattered around and perhaps not be a cohesive artistic unit, which would benefit the transcribers' argument. For further information, LegalEagle has a 25-minute YouTube video discussing this case and the involved legal principles. As the arrangement is a derivative work, the transcribers might be able to advance a separate &quot;triviality&quot; argument. The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals (also citing the Second Circuit cases) states in Schrock v. Learning Curve International, Inc. [T]he key inquiry is whether there is sufficient nontrivial expressive variation in the derivative work to make it distinguishable from the underlying work in some meaningful way. However, this emphasis the court makes on having the derivative be nontrivially distinguishable from the original doesn't arise from statute, but from a practical concern of determining whether the derivative or original was copied from given a hypothetical subsequent derivative. Assuming the company can prove the original hasn't been &quot;leaked&quot; and is unpublished, I would expect this argument to be discarded. Additionally, here is where copyright traps might actually help the company. Interesting aside: the German law on derivatives diverges here based on an oddly specific clause for public domain music (UrhG § 3): Translations and other adaptations of a work which are the adapter’s own intellectual creations are protected as independent works without prejudice to the copyright in the adapted work. The insubstantial adaptation of an unprotected musical work is not protected as an independent work. 4. The asserted truths doctrine This is a bit of a novel argument, since the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals only just articulated an &quot;asserted truths&quot; doctrine on 2020-09-08 in Corbello v. Valli: Adopting an “asserted truths” doctrine, the panel held that an author who holds their work out as nonfiction cannot later claim, in litigation, that aspects of the work were actually made up and thus entitled to full copyright protection. Basically, an author had claimed that the work was a factual biography, but then in the lawsuit claimed it was fiction in order to gain additional copyright protection since facts are not entitled to copyright protection. The court denied copyright protection for such an action. If the company is asserting that the performance is a 100% faithful rendition of the public domain work, the transcribers might be able to adapt this argument. They might argue that they relied on the asserted truth that they were copying public domain material. The company might counter that since this is a performance, one would expect that there will necessarily be at least some small differences and so the doctrine does not apply. Here, the transcribers may be able to counter that based on the company's representation, they had expected that any such small differences would not be under copyright due to not meeting the &quot;modicum of creativity&quot; standard. I think this argument is a stretch though. 5. Making the transcription public domain &amp; final points Assuming the arguments above worked for the transcribers, they don't really need to specifically designate the transcription public domain – it already is by its nature of not being copyrightable by those very same arguments. The one exception though would be that they hold copyright in the layout of their transcription so would have to designate it public domain for that purpose. If the arguments above do not work for the transcribers and the arrangement is found to have copyright protection, I can't think of any other viable arguments for the transcribers. They might argue fair use, but given their intent to disseminate the transcription, I would expect that argument to fail quickly based on both the nature/quantity of the copying and the damage caused to the company's revenue. On the minimal chance that fair use or some other argument works, the transcribers still could not put the transcription in the public domain. They could say that, but it would be of no real effect, since in this scenario it's the company that holds copyright over the arrangement represented by the transcription. In all, I believe that if the performance is a rigorously faithful rendition with only the odd mistake or flourish here and there, then the transcription is not copyright infringement. Otherwise, it is. Wow, that took me a while to get to this relatively simple conclusion.
Even if I give credit to the composer, and I will make no profit from the performance, will it still be illegal to use my transcription? This definitely infringes the composer's performance and derivative work rights under the composer's copyright. There is a mandatory right to cover someone else's composition outside of a movie or TV show (roughly speaking) for a statutorily fixed royalty, but the bureaucracy is such that it would be impractical to do here. Whether or not the &quot;fair use&quot; defense applies in this case is a &quot;colorable&quot; argument, but really, when you perform the entire work as written except for transcription, winning a &quot;fair use&quot; defense in a infringement action would be a long shot. The fact that it is somehow connected to an educational activity would be the strongest argument in this case. Also, as noted in a comment, your school may have obtained express permission to cover the work: Your music school may have a license with a PRO (performing rights organization) that covers your song. You might make some inquiries with the administration as to whether this is the case. Radio stations obtain similar licenses to play a large catalog of music without individually obtaining licenses to use each work separately from the author. This said, this kind of activity is often done, despite the fact that it is a copyright infringement, and most of the time, if the performance isn't too widely broadcast, most copyright owners will never pursue copyright infringement claims over something like this and indeed often won't even consider doing so. Still, copyright is an absolute bar to infringing rights without permission, even if there is absolutely no money received for the work and even if there is full attribution of its author. I'm not a great fan of the law as it is, and it is often disregarded, but that is the law. Also, this answer is based upon U.S. law, but there isn't much international variation in this part of copyright law in countries that meaningfully enforce copyright laws in their courts. But, as another answer notes, in some countries the mandatory right to do a cover of songs in the U.S. is much easier bureaucratically, in some other countries: In several countries, there are organizations that deal with the copyright issue globally. That means you pay a certain (quite small) fee to be allowed to perform a piece of music publicly, and the organization deals with the individual right owners. That makes reusing works much simpler.
You are required to provide a copyright notice on your work, such as putting (c) rhino 2016 in the liner notes. Nothing precludes you from licensing that copyright in any way you want, such as Creative Commons. As long as you aren't in violation of the last sentence (your work is not primarily the samples, and you actually made a song with them), then others should be able to use your work with no restrictions other than what you yourself place on the work. The purpose of requiring a copyright notice on derivative works is to give notice of who the actual author is and distance the original author from the derivative work. If you take their samples and make a song that is later at the center of a lawsuit (copyright, defamation, etc), the the copyright notice will hopefully steer people first to the derivative author and not the original author. That is the purpose of the clause in the copyright grant above.
No If YT#1 gets a license from artist A, that permits YT#1 to do whatever copying and reuse is stated in the license. It might be narrow or very broad. Usually such a license will only grant permission to the person who asked. Unless the license also grants permission to YT#2, or to some broader group which includes YT#2, YT#2 cannot claim any rights under such a license. Assuming that the license does not include him or her, YT#2 has the same rights as any member of the public would, but no more. In general, pitch raising a piece of music is a way of creating a derivative work. In the US, under 17 USC 106 one needs permission from the copyright owner to create a derivative work. Otherwise doing so is copyright infringement. The laws of other countries, and the Berne Copyright Convention have similar provisions on this point. Creating a derivative work requires permission in all countries that I know about. &quot;Piggybacking&quot; is not a thing in copyright law. A copyright owner can give permission (usually called a license) to any person or group of persons that the owner pleases. The permission does not extend to anyone else. This is true in all countries. I should be clear that YT#2 needs permission from both YT#1, and from A. The way the question is worded I have been assuming that YT#2 had permission from YT#1, but a comment from grovkin made it clear that I needed to be more explicit about this. It is possible for a license to permit a person to pass on the license to others. For example, all CC licenses and all copyleft and most open source licenses do this, and others could. But the license must explicitly grant such permission. The one way in which a person might create a derivative work without permission and without it being infringement is if an exception to copyright applies. In the US the main exception to copyright is fair use. See Is this copyright infringement? Is it fair use? What if I don&#39;t make any money off it? for more detail on fair use. Fair use decisions are made on a case by case basis, and generally depend on the detailed facts of the ase. But based on the limited info in the question, this would not qualify. It seems to use the whole piece of music, which tends to weigh against fair use. The new work does not seem to be transformative, that is, it seems to serve the same general purpose as the original. The new work might harm the economic value of the original, or might if many people did this. The original is creative, not factual. All of those weigh against fair use. Different countries have very different exceptions to copyright, and I do not know all of them. But the use described in the question does not seem to fit any that I know of. In any case, an exception to copyright applies to anyone, and does not depend on another person's license. It is thus never a form of &quot;piggybacking&quot;. By the way, the question describes pitch raising ads &quot;illegal&quot;. Making an unauthorized derivative work gives the copyright owner grounds to sue. If the owner does sue, and wins, s/he might be awarded money damages, and the court might issue an injunction ordering the infringer not to infringe again. But it would not normally be treated as a crime, and law enforcement would not be involved. In the US, only bulk copyright infringement, carried out as a business, is usually prosecuted (for example a factory churning out unauthorized music CDs).
If the typography is a significant aspect of the overall art of a song title - wherever the song title may be reproduced, i.e. poster, CD cover, etc. - than I'd say that's part of the copyright of the artwork as a whole and not simply the title, and is under copyright. Further, individual type faces can be under copyright themselves. And band names can be trademarked; you will need permission to use the name for products and advertising, since using the name will imply an endorsement from that band.