Auto-generating every possible melody to forstall copyright: will this work? This article describes a scheme to have a computer generate every possible "8-note, 12-beat melody combo" and release it under a Creative Commons license so that anyone can use it (not exactly public domain, but close enough for practical purposes). The idea is that from now on it will not be possible to copyright a basic melodic theme because it will already have been written in a tangible form. Will this really forestall copyright infringement suits? Edit: to clarify. Suppose I write a melody, and someone else claims that they wrote the same melody and hence have copyright on it. Can I point to the existence of the melody in this generated corpus as a defence?
Seems unlikely that it will "forestall copyright infringement suits". Some jurisdictions, e.g the USA, say that "Works produced by mechanical processes or random selection without any contribution by a human author are not registrable". On the face of it, in such a jurisdiction copyright can't exist in a randomly generated work. Which the TED talk doesn't mention. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJtm0MoOgiU Let's imagine a case in a jurisdiction where copyright can exist in such a work. There is a dispute between two artists or labels. The plaintiff produced a well known tune and accuses the defendant of copying this work. The defendant says the plaintiff didn't have copyright in that work because it wasn't original in the first place, there is a 1200GB TAR file (compressed file) on GitHub that contains all possible single octave, 8-note, 12-beat melody combos, which were produced before the plaintiff's work. The plaintiff says, "like the majority of the population I never heard of GitHub, let alone downloaded, uncompressed a 1200GB file and listened to every melody." That's all aside from plaintiffs or lawyers deciding they have a case or believing the mere threat of civil proceedings will cause the alleged infringer to acquiesce to their demands. I think they are making a point about the law rather than a realistic means of thwarting copyright disputes. It's reasonable of the creators to say there is a finite set of melodies and the likelihood of inadvertently 'creating' the same melody as someone else may be smaller than we think, maybe copyright law has led to some unjust outcomes and led to a chilling effect on music-making.
Alice has been developing her own enhancements, and they're pretty similar to Bob's. Neither Alice nor Bob has copied the other's enhancements, so neither has violated the other's copyright in the enhancements. Whether that could be proved in court is another matter, of course, but since the original work is licensed under creative commons the question unlikely to arise in court. Would Alice be prevented from coming up with enhancements to her own game if other people could prove they thought of and released the idea first? No. Copyright does not protect ideas. It only protects a particular expression of those ideas from being copied. Theoretically, if two authors come up with identical 500-word descriptions of something and can establish that each did so independently, neither has a claim against the other. The practical problem there, of course, is that it would be impossible to prove such a thing. Could Alice outright claim Bob's "Adapted Material" because he developed it on her original work? Assuming that in publishing his adaptations Bob followed the terms of the creative commons license with respect to the original work, Alice's only claim would be that he copied her adaptations without following the terms of the license. If Bob can show that he did not do so, her claim would fail. In a comment, you wrote: Suppose Alice went ahead and intentionally, somehow provably ripped off Bob's "Adapted Material" because she liked the content so much, does Bob reserve any rights on his adaptation, or is Alice able to commercialize the work that Bob did in extending her original work? If we assume that Bob complied with the license of the original material, we know that he licensed his adaptations under "the identical terms," so Alice would be able to use Bob's adaptations under those terms for non-commercial purposes. Since the assumption here is that Alice provably copied something of Bob's, I think it is fairly clear that she would be liable for damages if she exploited that material commercially without paying royalties.
Ideas are not Subject to Copyright Copyright does not protect ideas. This is true in the US, in the UK, and under the copyright laws of every country that I know of. Article 2 paragraph 8 of the Berne Copyright Convention reads: The protection of this Convention shall not apply to news of the day or to miscellaneous facts having the character of mere items of press information. If the ideas of a work have been so re-written or recast as not to constitute a derivative work, the original author has no rights over the new work, which becomes a separate work with its own copyright. In such case there is no legal requirement for any credit or acknowledgement, at least not under copyright law. Also the use of a work whose copyright has expired, or is for some other reason in the public domain and not protected by copyright, may be legally made without acknowledgement of the author, or even under a false designation of authorship. Plagiarism Passing someone else's work off as one's own is generally considered to be plagiarism. Some people consider that using significant parts of another's work without proper credit is also plagiarism. Plagiarism is not a legal matter. It is considered highly improper in the academic and journalistic worlds, and may carry serious consequences there. It is considered unethical by many in other situations as well. However, it does not constitute copyright infringement, and copyright law cannot be used to prevent or punish plagiarism that is not also infringement. Works Created by an Automated Process or Script Whether an automated process can (at the current state of the art) truly extract facts and re-express them to a degree that would constitute a new, non-infringing work, I tend to doubt. Whether even sufficient alteration could be made by an automated process to reliably constitute fair use, fair dealing, or have any similar exception apply I also doubt. The US Copyright Office Compendium of Copyright practice (an official publication of the US Copyright Office) states in item 307: The U.S. Copyright Office will register an original work of authorship, provided that the work was created by a human being. The copyright law only protects “the fruits of intellectual labor” that “are founded in the creative powers of the mind.” Trade-Mark Cases, 100 U.S. 82, 94 (1879). Because copyright law is limited to “original intellectual conceptions of the author,” the Office will refuse to register a claim if it determines that a human being did not create the work. Burrow-Giles Lithographic Co. v. Sarony, 111 U.S. 53, 58 (1884) Similar legal limits on AI authorship apply in many other countries. Fair Use Fair use is a specifically US legal concept, and generally does not apply in any other country, although I understand that Israel has closely followed US law in this matter. Fair use is defined by 17 USC 107. That law specifies four factors which a court must consider in making a decision on whether a use is a fair use. particularly important is whether the new work will harm actual or potential markets for the original, and whether it will serve as a replacement for the original. US Courts also often consider whether a new work is &quot;transformative&quot;, that is whether it serves a significantly different purpose than the original does. For example, in a popular song, lyrics are often intended to have an emotional effect. In a textbook on verse, the same lyrics may be used to demonstrate poetic technique, rhyme, meter, etc. That would be a transformative use. The presence of proper attribution or credit is often a significant factor in the decision by a court as to whether a use is fair. Using another's work without proper credit is significantly less likely to be found to be a fair use, although credit is not an absolute requirement of fair use. See Is this copyright infringement? Is it fair use? What if I don&#39;t make any money off it? and the various questions on this site tagged fair-use for many more details on fair use. Fair dealing and Other Exceptions to Copyright In the UK and some commonwealth countries, there is a doctrine known as &quot;fair dealing&quot; It is somewhat similar to fair use, but is generally more limited. In other countries there are various &quot;exceptions to copyright&quot;. Some countries have a few broad exception, some have many narrower exceptions. India, for example, has more than 28 separate exceptions. What is covered varies from country to county. Exceptions for teaching, comment and analysis, and news reporting are common. Article 9, paragraph 2 of the Berne Copyright Convention (linked above) recognizes such exceptions, stating: It shall be a matter for legislation in the countries of the Union to permit the reproduction of such works in certain special cases, provided that such reproduction does not conflict with a normal exploitation of the work and does not unreasonably prejudice the legitimate interests of the author. The convention goes on to state, in article 10, that: (1) It shall be permissible to make quotations from a work which has already been lawfully made available to the public, provided that their making is compatible with fair practice, and their extent does not exceed that justified by the purpose, including quotations from newspaper articles and periodicals in the form of press summaries. (2) It shall be a matter for legislation in the countries of the Union, and for special agreements existing or to be concluded between them, to permit the utilization, to the extent justified by the purpose, of literary or artistic works by way of illustration in publications, broadcasts or sound or visual recordings for teaching, provided such utilization is compatible with fair practice. (3) Where use is made of works in accordance with the preceding paragraphs of this Article, mention shall be made of the source, and of the name of the author if it appears thereon. Thus article 10 paragraph 3 of the Berne Copyright Convention establishes an international norm that works used under an exception to copyright, such as fair use or fair dealing, shall be properly credited. Web-Scraping The law on computer scraping is still under development, and varies from country to country. If a site operator makes it clear to users that scraping is unwelcome, it may be unlawful, depending on the rules of the country or countries involved. When a Terms of Service (TOS) document constitutes a binding contract or agreement that users must accept, and when such an agreement prohibits scraping or other automated access, that prohibition may be enforceable. in Craigslist Inc. v. 3Taps Inc., 942 F.Supp.2d 962 (N.D. Cal. 2013) a US Federal district court held that sending a cease-and-desist letter and enacting an IP address block is sufficient notice of online trespassing, which a plaintiff can use to claim a violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). However, that decision has been criticized by many, and was not a Circuit court or Supreme Court case. In the recent case of Van Buren v. United States, 593 U.S. ___ (2021) the US Supreme Court narrowed the application of the language in the CFAA making access that &quot;exceeds authorization&quot; criminal. In the case of HiQ Labs, Inc. v. LinkedIn Corp. The Supreme Court addressed the question of whether scraping a public website after a cease-and-desist letter has been sent constitutes a violation of the CFAA (this was the fact pattern in Craigslist v. 3Taps). The Court sent the case back to the Ninth Circuit for reconsideration. The Ninth Circuit Court reaffiremd its prior decision that when the website had been made publicly accessible, the CFAA did not apply, even in the face of a C&amp;D letter. This seems to overrule 3taps. Note that other means of prohibiting scraping may still be legally sound and enforceable. See &quot;hiQ Labs v. LinkedIn&quot; from the National Law Review. (This article and the decision it reports was brought to my attention via a comment by user Michael Seifert.) The article &quot;Web Scraping Watch: Cases Set to Clarify Application of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act&quot; discusses these cases in more detail, but does not incloude the latest ruling in the HiQ Labs case. Conclusion Unless the results of the &quot;rewrite&quot; done by the &quot;program&quot; are sufficiently original to be neither a quotation, a fair use, nor a derivative work, but a new work using the same ideas, they will need to qualify under fair use or some other exception to copyright (unless permission has been obtained). This may well require a proper attribution of the original article. In any case, such credit is considered to be ethically mandatory by many. The web-scraping done to obtain the initial data may or may not be lawful, depending on the contents of any TOS document, and whether the relevant laws make such a document enforceable, which is still not a fully settled point under the law, and which varies by country. Personally, I would think giving proepr credit much easier and safer than trying to justify not doing so, but that is not law, just my opnion.
Ideas (methods of playing, game mechanics, strategy, goals) cannot be protected by copyright. But any part of a creative work can. So, no copying of drawings, patterns, images, sounds, or the element. I suppose copying the software code is not an issue here, but it can, obviously, also not be copied. And nothing in your game can look like someone's else trademark.
You have a false premise: "it offers the same conditions", and "MIT license is functionally equivalent to CC-BY". These premises are not true. CC-BY: applies to more than just software; it applies to artistic or literary work, databases, other material disclaims endorsement explicitly withholds moral rights explicitly does not license patent rights (MIT license gives anyone who obtains a copy of the software the right to use it, a patent right) prescribes the acceptable forms of attribution Those are just some of the differences.
A &quot;cover&quot; does require a license, but it a special license – a compulsory license, sometimes called a &quot;mechanical license&quot;. Under 17 USC 115, upon payment of a fixed license fee, you can obtain a compulsory license (meaning that the author cannot withhold permission) as long as you don't create what would be a derivative work for music, that is you adhere to this restriction: A compulsory license includes the privilege of making a musical arrangement of the work to the extent necessary to conform it to the style or manner of interpretation of the performance involved, but the arrangement shall not change the basic melody or fundamental character of the work, and shall not be subject to protection as a derivative work under this title, except with the express consent of the copyright owner. This essentially defines the limit that you seek. Wierd Al compositions are so-o-o over the limits set for a compulsory license, but arguably (according to some), he might be able to avail himself of a fair use defense, because parody and commentary are the primary reasons for the fair use exception in the US. A &quot;cover&quot; is typically not fair use, in that it has a palpable effect on market and it is not &quot;transformative.
This falls within the penumbra of Feist v. Rural Telephone. The principle articulated there is that facts are not subject to copyright protection, but the expression of facts can be. Quoting from the ruling, "no author may copyright his ideas or the facts he narrates...however, it is beyond dispute that compilations of facts are within the subject matter of copyright". The distinction between protected vs. not protected hinges on originality: "The sine qua non of copyright is originality. To qualify for copyright protection, a work must be original to the author". But it is not sufficient that the work is created by the "sweat of the brow" of an author: it must possess at least some minimal degree of creativity. Thus "[t]he writings which are to be protected are the fruits of intellectual labor, embodied in the form of books, prints, engravings, and the like". As a concrete example, the ruling states "Census-takers, for example, do not 'create' the population figures that emerge from their efforts; in a sense, they copy these figures from the world around them...Census data therefore do not trigger copyright because these data are not 'original' in the constitutional sense." But, compilations of facts can be protected: Factual compilations, on the other hand, may possess the requisite originality. The compilation author typically chooses which facts to include, in what order to place them, and how to arrange the collected data so that they may be used effectively by readers. These choices as to selection and arrangement, so long as they are made independently by the compiler and entail a minimal degree of creativity, are sufficiently original that Congress may protect such compilations through the copyright laws An email list requires nothing more than brow-sweat, and even then, not much. A cleverly annotated and arranged email list would involve substantial creativity and would be subject to protection. That does not mean that you didn't sign some agreement that prohibits you from copying or using the list, but it isn't a matter of copyright.
Details depend on the juristiction. For that, consult a lawyer if you plan to publish your app anywhere. But generally, even simple texts from exercises can be covered by copyright. Compare song lyrics, which are not much longer (and might not involve more creative thought than a good exercise ...). For vocabulary lists, it gets more tricky, but those can be covered as well if the assembly of the list was a creative effort. So if you simply list the 1,000 most common worlds in English and their translation, you are possibly fine, but if the words are divided into units and lessons, that's creative work.