[williamcotton]

I work in copyright law.

Style is not subject to copyright, only expression. If there are unique lyrics and unique melodies under two bars then there is no copyright infringement.

A song that sounds like other pop songs is basically the very nature of pop music.

Pick a genre, for example reggae, and you’ll find a lot of perfectly legal songs that are almost indistinguishable aside from the musicians who are playing the music.

[Terr_]

> Style is not subject to copyright, only expression.

In this case you can assume Acme Music is making purposeful performances/impersonations of the original songs/artists, because the goal of the scenario is to show that "but I used a human brain to do it" isn't a magical get-out-of-infringement-free card.

Illustrating the boundaries of fair-use or transformative works is... Well, a somewhat-separate issue that would need a different kind of scenario.

[williamcotton]

Unless I’m shown concrete examples of what constitutes this kind of purposeful impersonation I’m unsure what is being discussed. I take your explanation to mean that any company that decided to start writing, producing and distributing reggae music would fall under this description.

Again, I am honestly confused by what is meant in this thread!

[Terr_]

A paraphrased recap:

1. Conasg: Taking huge amounts of copyrighted material without consent and selling access to it seems illegal.

2. Intrasight: Humans learn from copyrighted material all the time, and indirectly profit from it, so why can't the AI?

3. Me: Some of the stuff the software is being used to do would still copyright infringement even if you had teams of humans (inefficiently) doing it instead.

[williamcotton]

But what is that “some of the stuff”? I can’t think of any examples unless they are using large sections of melody and lyrics!

There literally are teams of people paid to deliver reggae music to people. Or pop music. I’m not well versed enough in trap music but it all sounds like the same autotuned vocals over a high-hat heavy percussive back track! It may be derivative and worthy of criticism, but only in an artistic manner. It is not derivative in a legal manner.

[Terr_]

> But what is that “some of the stuff”?

If you work in copyright law, why ask random internet-commenters? The allegations and arguments are the legal filing [0], such as:

> [4] Defendants’ GenAI tools can generate output that recites Times content verbatim [...]

> [5] Defendants also [...] generate responses that contain verbatim excerpts and detailed summaries of Times articles that are significantly longer and more detailed than those returned by traditional search engines. By providing Times content without The Times’s permission or authorization, Defendants’ tools undermine and damage The Times’s relationship with its readers and deprive The Times of subscription, licensing, advertising, and affiliate revenue.

> [6] [T]here is nothing “transformative” about using The Times’s content without payment to create products that substitute for The Times and steal audiences away from it. Because the outputs of Defendants’ GenAI models compete with and closely mimic the inputs used to train them, copying Times works for that purpose is not fair use.

[0] 1:23-cv-11195 - https://nytco-assets.nytimes.com/2023/12/NYT_Complaint_Dec20...

[protocolture]

[4] So it can do the job of Archive.IS?

[5] Excerpts and Summaries are fair use, or should be.

[6] Is there a market for a chatbot that simply repeats a single news source? Its not really the purpose of the product.

[williamcotton]

I’m asking because:

Imagine that Acme Music hires large sweatshops of workers, who are tasked with listening to trending (copyrighted) songs and then go through grueling practice to sing and play near-perfect performances of those songs, delivered to any customer who asks for one.

Is just plain wrong on how I would interpret the statement.

But I have given you the benefit of the doubt and checked to see if you meant they were literally just re-recording already existing pop songs.

If they were just pumping out artistically derivative drivel of trending styles, but not derivative in terms of copyright law, that’s perfectly legal.

I’ve been asking for clarity, not your opinion on the law.

And even when it comes to copyright law, a good lawyer with enough of their client’s money can make any sort of argument and find a ruling in their favor, but these legal discussions tend to be spoken of in absolutes by random internet commentators!