[goodness]

I'm no lawyer, but that doesn't seem consistent with any other law in the US. Ignorance is never an excuse. Also, the first result from a google search for 'copyright infringement willful' yields this:

  http://www.ladas.com/NII/CopyrightInfringement.html

which says:

'Copyright infringement is determined without regard to the intent or the state of mind of the infringer; "innocent" infringement is infringement nonetheless.'

As with patents though, I think the intent does play a role in determining damages.

[lmkg]

IANAL either, but I think you're misunderstanding. Ignorance of the law is not generally an excuse for breaking the law. But if you're not copying the original copyrighted source, you're not breaking the law in the first place. Copyright only protects against copying, and unlike patents, does not protect against independently creating the same or similar work (operative word "independently").

Relevant quotes from wikipedia:

> "... two authors may own copyright on two substantially identical works, if it is determined that the duplication was coincidental, and neither was copied from the other."

> "Infringement requires... that the defendant copied the protected work... if two individuals both create a story that by pure coincidence is nearly identical, but each without knowledge of the other, there is no infringement since there is no copying."

So in the example the poster above gave, you can't just own the copyrights. You also have to get your work distributed widely enough to claim that the author was aware of your work, from which you can build a troll-ish infringement claim.

[cduan]

Ignorance of the law is never an excuse, but ignorance of the facts is frequently an excuse. "Innocent" copyright infringement can occur when you think it is legal to copy something (e.g. the copyright has expired, it is fair use, etc.), but it turns out that you are mistaken.

However, for copyright to apply, you actually have to copy something. If you coincidentally come up with the exact same song that someone else wrote already, but you never heard about the other person's song, you would not infringe copyright in the other person's song.

In contrast, patents infringement is "strict liability," meaning that you can infringe a patent without even knowing that the patent exists.

[goodness]

If this is really the case, then it seems to be a loophole for a reverse scenario. You write a computer algorithm to generate vast collections of music. Since the computer, pretty much by definition, is ignorant of other music then you can claim copyright over everything it generates. Wait for it to produce "copies" of popular melodies and then you can publish cheap clones or license popular songs to people for a fraction of the cost of the originals.

If there is an objection that the computer isn't considered a person, then form a corporation and copyright the songs to the corporation. The corporation is equally ignorant of any other music. Human judgment is only exercised by a second corporation that searches the first corporations extensive database to find popular melodies to license.

[gojomo]

Courts are not computers; they apply subtle judgments based on a total reading of scenario.

If your intent was to discover and then market tunes identical to popular copyrighted tunes, a court can view the totality of your system as 'copying' existing works. If your two corporations exist to obscure the real intent of the people behind them, a court can treat them as co-defendants.

[gojomo]

But coincidence is not copying. The quote you've excerpted is when someone actually copies something, but thought it was alright to do so.