Copyrighting all the melodies to avoid accidental infringement | Damien Riehl | TEDxMinneapolis

I’m reminded of lawyer Damien Riehl’s (performative) reaction to the Sam Smith infringement decision, back in 2019/2020. He and programmer Noah Rubin algorithmically generated every possible melody (within a certain combinatorial space, in MIDI format as I recall), and purported to release them under CC-0 license [0]. He went on to attract some attention and explain his argument at a regional TEDx event [1]. I seem to recall legal commentators reacting with an eyeroll—apparently judges split much finer hairs than these for a living—but it was a cute stunt. [0] link [1] ▶ this video and link

I hope this has been tested by now, but not sure: Copyrighting all the melodies to avoid accidental infringement | Damien Riehl | TEDxMinneapolis ▶ this video

1. lots of established law and case law (at least in the US), this is already a well-settled problem and folks have the tools and proper venue to bring infringement claims. Yes, federal copyright infringement litigation is prohibitively expensive for many issues. There is a now a "small claims court" for smaller issues. [1] 2. Those works cannot be copyrighted (at least in the US). [2]. And hey, someone already tried copyrighting every song melody [3] [1]: link [2]: link [3]: ▶ this video

They did a great Tedx talk here, and the person effectively describes the problems that Sheeran has run into: ▶ this video

There is also the brute force approach (from 2020) to generate every possible melody and release it under the Creative Commons: ▶ this video

That is the reason these guys decided to Copyrighting all the melodies to avoid accidental infringement ▶ this video TED talk

Is this beginning of a Copyright trolling campaign or preventing accidental infringement as similar case in music ▶ this video ?

You wouldn't even need ML. Iirc there was this guy who coded a script that played every permutation of 12 notes in a 5 minute period and then made all the Melodys public domain. Ianal so I don't know if this would hold up in court, but technically that should invalidate every copyright on Melodys after that point in time. E: ▶ this video found the ted talk