[metacorrector]

There was a project in the early days of the internet boom, a website was put up (in australia IIRC) with every possible melody combination (using discrete scales) along with a copyright notice for each one, so nobody would be able to write a song in the future without infringing.

even if there was no creativity involved and thus the copyright would fail, it seems (IANAL) that it might put the melodies into the public domain, since how could somebody claim you had no right to use a melody that you had already published?

[dragonwriter]

Copyright is not ownership of a particular composition, its ownership of the right to copy a particular work. While similar composition often is relevant evidence in a copyright case, the actual critical fact is, for ownership, the act of creation, and for infringement, whether the creation was copied/derived from a particular other work in which copyright ownership existed due to the act of creation.

The project you describe seems to be based on a patent-like idea of copyright, where infringement is independent of whether or not the work is an actual derivative of the protected work.

[metacorrector]

I don't think (as I said) the guy was intending to chase around the world protecting his copyrights, he was trying to show the absurdity of the definitions that copyright law depends on, and in that sense what he did refuted a priori your comment.

You use the term "act of creation" as if he didn't engage in it. Not sure how you can claim that he didn't create the melodies, he did, doesn't matter that he didn't ever hear them, neither did Beethoven (you get my point). If he had any musical training he could credibly state that he was creating a Philip Glass style composition exploring the space of melodies blah blah blah. You don't think a skilled musician could characterize and categorize the different elements of this work? If he was serious about it, he could call it his ring cycle and start playing it, all the way through, a one hour performance a week.

And then I pointed out, and you ignored, that even if he didn't go out and claim copyright infringement, there is still the point that he insulated himself in a certain way from infringement claims from others.

I think he made an interesting philosophical point, I think you should chew on it in a more interesting way. In a case of an actual claim of infringement, he created lawyer fodder that could drag through courts for years, had he been a musician.

No, I don't think he overturned copyright law. To a large extent, judges make decisions based on practicalities more than they do on the letter of the law. The letter of the law comes up when there are colliding practicalities, and ambiguity in the law. Still, I think it's a more interesting thought exercise than you are giving it credit for.

[dllthomas]

Moreover, it ignores that the creative act, when you are viewing things from a perspective of "there is a space of every possible ...", is locating interesting locations within that space, which an enumeration is not doing.