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A comment on Ed Sheeran Demonstrates How Copyright Is Destroying Musicians. Parent comment

Re:Ed Sheeran Demonstrates How Copyright Is Destroying Music... by frutiger on Tuesday May 09, 2023 @01:02AM (#35870353)
Even if the claim that most pop melodies consist of 12 notes is true (which is dubious), the 8^12 number excludes variation in rhythm or the timing between the notes which can make a significant impact on the overall feeling of the melody. If you hum/whistle some pop song you know in your head, it is easy to see that the notes aren’t all equally spaced apart in time.
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Re:Ed Sheeran Demonstrates How Copyright Is Destroying Music... by croes on Tuesday May 09, 2023 @03:39AM (#35871285)
Take a popular song, change the rhythm and timing and wait if you get a copyright claim.
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Re:Ed Sheeran Demonstrates How Copyright Is Destroying Music... by maccard on Tuesday May 09, 2023 @06:25AM (#35872196)
A copyright claim doesn't mean you've copied anything. I can submit a DMCA takedown for any video on youtube by filling out a form [0] and it's fairly likely the video will be pulled.

[0] https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2807622?hl=en-GB

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Re:Ed Sheeran Demonstrates How Copyright Is Destroying Music... by croes on Tuesday May 09, 2023 @07:53AM (#35872934)
That's my point. And if your plaintiff is a billion dollar company and your resources are limited, that's pretty scarry if you're in the right.
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Re:Ed Sheeran Demonstrates How Copyright Is Destroying Music... by itronitron on Tuesday May 09, 2023 @06:55AM (#35872431)
Japanese Cowboy by Ween. Listen to the song in it's entirety before visiting the wiki page :)

https://youtu.be/-WJ7NMQyK2E

https://www.ween.wiki/wiki/Japanese_Cowboy

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Re:Ed Sheeran Demonstrates How Copyright Is Destroying Music... by telotortium on Tuesday May 09, 2023 @07:46PM (#35881815)
Seems pretty easy to identify the song it's based on to me (and the original composer even threatened to sue). The rhythm's also pretty similar though.
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Re:Ed Sheeran Demonstrates How Copyright Is Destroying Music... by itronitron on Wednesday May 10, 2023 @12:34AM (#35883679)
It's an interesting case though because they are clearly different songs. I listened to that song for many years and never once made the connection to the other one until I heard the live version played with the special ending.
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Re:Ed Sheeran Demonstrates How Copyright Is Destroying Music... by bryanrasmussen on Tuesday May 09, 2023 @08:22AM (#35873265)
take a popular song, change the rhythm and timing and maybe change the middle bridge part and change all the lyrics to be something you wrote yourself and wait if you get a copyright claim.
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Re:Ed Sheeran Demonstrates How Copyright Is Destroying Music... by brookst on Tuesday May 09, 2023 @09:25AM (#35873972)
"The copyright system is abused" is a very different claim than "the use of rhythm, rests, and timing greatly increases the original melody space". It's odd to refute one with the other.
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Re:Ed Sheeran Demonstrates How Copyright Is Destroying Music... by bryanrasmussen on Tuesday May 09, 2023 @02:18PM (#35878343)
no but look at how this very simple difference will lead to you being sued is very similar to look at how this very simple difference but slightly less simple than the other one and more of a real world scenario really will keep you from being sued.

It's very odd to not see the similarity between the two claims and how one exists as a critique of the other.

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Re:Ed Sheeran Demonstrates How Copyright Is Destroying Music... by PinguTS on Tuesday May 09, 2023 @04:10AM (#35871481)
You know that timing is defined by those notes.

Don't know what you mean by rythm.

Did you ever played by notes and as such learned to read them?

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Re:Ed Sheeran Demonstrates How Copyright Is Destroying Music... by bovermyer on Tuesday May 09, 2023 @06:43AM (#35872351)
Rhythm is the flow of music. It's not just the order of the notes played, but the length they're held and the space in between them.

A-B-C is very different than A~~~------B-C~, for example, even if it's still the same three notes in the same order.

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Re:Ed Sheeran Demonstrates How Copyright Is Destroying Music... by PinguTS on Tuesday May 09, 2023 @09:23AM (#35873937)
And that is clearly defined by writing down the notes. The length and the space between. That is the reason why we have the 1/1, 1/2, 1/4, … notes. On how those notes are connected and so on.
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Re:Ed Sheeran Demonstrates How Copyright Is Destroying Music... by bovermyer on Tuesday May 09, 2023 @11:25AM (#35875792)
A note is a single instance of a sound by pitch and duration. A note does not include the space in between or the timing.
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Re:Ed Sheeran Demonstrates How Copyright Is Destroying Music... by frutiger on Tuesday May 09, 2023 @02:46PM (#35878718)
But then the space is much larger than 8^12 once you include all those variants - that’s the claim I’m responding to.
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Re:Ed Sheeran Demonstrates How Copyright Is Destroying Music... by henrydark on Tuesday May 09, 2023 @06:46AM (#35872376)
Well, he could mean that some notes are connected (where I think we all mean the 8 notes are of equal measure). So between every two consecutive notes you can add a line, multiplying the space by 2^7
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Re:Ed Sheeran Demonstrates How Copyright Is Destroying Music... by francisofascii on Tuesday May 09, 2023 @08:47AM (#35873542)
Agree, but a jury just needs to decide a song sounds similar for it to be a copyright infringement. So a jury may hear the same melody and exclude the variation in their comparison.
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