Judge Chooses Pi Day To Reject Lawsuit Over Attempt To Copyright Pi As A Song

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120316/14275618144/judge-chooses-pi-day-to-reject-lawsuit-over-attempt-to-copyright-pi-as-song.shtml?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

by llambda • 14 years ago

56 18 14 years ago

techdirt.com

joelrunyon• 14 years ago

The song in question - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOQb_mtkEEE

DennisP• 14 years ago

Awesome, thank you. It was a sad day when the copyright claim made it disappear, and it's made my day to see it back. Kudos to the judge.

sophacles• 14 years ago

On the one hand, I really respect the judge for being reasonable in this. Kudos to him.

On the other hand, there is a perverse part of me wishing it had gone the other way -- what a great way to highlight what is broken about copyright it would be to quote this case.

lotharbot• 14 years ago

This case shows one of the few things that's not broken about copyright: you can't copyright facts, or the idea of setting those facts to music.

For example, you can't copyright a list of the names of all of the presidents of the US, nor can you copyright the idea of putting all of those names to music, though you can copyright your specific musical arrangement.

pilif• 14 years ago

So of course the logical conclusion to the judge saying that "Copyright is thus intended to protect the original work of authors without granting monopolies over facts or ideas that would hinder further progress" will be for Mr. Erickson to apply for a patent for a "method or apparatus for transposing numbers into musical notes".

Then he could sue the other guy again on patent grounds.

Because, as we all know, patents are made precisely for granting monopolies "in order not to hinder further progress", to reuse the judges original wording.

nextparadigms• 14 years ago

It would be really funny (in a bad way) when we'll discover that a law that we use with the intent to "further progress", actually does the opposite and hinders it.

Unfortunately this won't happen unless the patent law goes to the Supreme Court over this or a bunch of companies lobby Congress with hard data showing them that patents hinder progress.

Danieru• 14 years ago

Or if the next iPhone gets blocked...

mindslight• 14 years ago

Argh, declaring Pi day as 3-14 is straight up cargo cult numerology. I will ask, what then is "pi time" ? Is it 1:59:26... AM? But the range of hours is greater than 10 and daytime wouldn't be bad, so maybe we want to put it 15:92:65... . Oops, now our fundamental problem is revealed - we're taking a base 10 decimal and cramming it into a base 12/30.?/24/60/60/10 format digit by digit.

Pi is a ratio, and we'd do much better service to its meaning by declaring 'pi time' as when 1/pi of the year is over. In leap years, this happens on April 26 at 12:02:01... PM. At this point, the Earth will have moved twice the distance that it is from the sun (tau day might be cooler in this regard, but would happen in dreary February)

(I swear I'm more fun at parties, just not necessarily "pi day" parties)

MSexton• 14 years ago

"Cargo-cult numerology"? It's a fun excuse to eat pie. Most semi-educated people have an idea what pi is, and can easily make the connection.

sukuriant• 14 years ago

Enhance your calm :) it's all in fun

mikeash• 14 years ago

Cargo cult numerology would be if we declared that there was some sort of inherent significance to pi day. Of course, there isn't, and I doubt anybody who acknowledges pi day thinks that there is. It's just an arbitrary date with an amusingly similar representation.

fhars• 14 years ago

Since the year has $\pi \times 10^7$ seconds, the real pi day is actually new years eve.

jedberg• 14 years ago

Couldn't each artist copyright their individual performance though?

I know that wouldn't make a difference here, just a tangential question.

brlewis• 14 years ago

Yes, they can. The title is misleading; the song itself is copyrighted. Read the article for a more thorough treatment of what is/isn't copyrighted.

grellas• 14 years ago

For those who are not categorically opposed to the idea of copyright (I am not), this case illustrates both the good and the bad of the current system.

Copyright when properly applied ultimately protects creative forms of expression (see http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3479959). It does so by giving the originator of a creative work (the "author") a monopoly on it for a limited time, the effect of which is to allow that person to control who can copy it, alter it, etc. Because the goal is to protect creativity, copyright cannot legitimately be used to give anyone a monopoly over ideas themselves (such as the idea of transposing pi to musical notes), or over expressions of ideas that are indistinguishable from the underlying ideas themselves, or over standard or stock elements (e.g., stock character types in plays), or over facts. Even if a work itself is properly copyrighted, that protection extends only to the elements of that work that are sufficiently original as to be protectible and not to other elements. Thus, if someone claims infringement and the only concrete similarities between two works relate to elements not protected by copyright (e.g., facts or ideas), there can be no infringement. Applying these rules here, a judge well-versed in copyright law held that pi is a non-copyrightable fact, the transcription of pi to music is a non-copyrightable idea, the resulting pattern of notes is an expression that merges with the non-copyrightable idea of transcribing pi to music, and the remaining elements of similarity in the two works are so incidental and scattered that there is no way it can be said that the works are substantially similar - hence, no infringement can be found even if the works might be found to sound similar in certain ways. In focusing strongly on the underlying principle of what copyright is all about (to protect original forms of creative expression), the judge held that the "Pi Symphony" creator, though possibly holding a valid copyright on his overall work, was entitled to protect that work against only virtually identical copying because any broader form of legal protection would allow that creator to overreach and to claim what would amount essentially to a monopoly over the very concept of transposing pi to music. This is what older generations would have called a "felicitous result" - one that allows creative work to be legally protected within the strict limits justified by the purpose of the copyright law and no more. The result comports with both law and common sense and is well-articulated by this judge in a solid opinion. That is the good part.

The bad part is that an Oregon resident had to fight a federal lawsuit, first in the distant forum of Nebraska in order to challenge jurisdiction and venue, and then through what was undoubtedly a set of motions in Oregon that had to cost at least tens of thousands of dollars. For big companies, maybe this is reasonable but, for an average person trying to defend against this sort of attack, the process itself becomes obnoxious. This is a big reason that IP bullying can be so easily practiced and why so many have to cave to it - even if they are in the right. In a digital age, such bullying has become even more obnoxious, driving many to the point of despising copyright altogether in spite of its historic purposes and merits.

slowpoke• 14 years ago

>the goal [of copyright] is to protect creativity

Except that's not true. It never was, ever since its inception in the 16th century. Copyright has always been about protecting publishers and middlemen (or in other words, a business model), and not creativity or creators. That's a historical fact, and one that hasn't changed to the present day. Copyright might be a nice idea on paper (I beg to differ), but in reality its just legal fiction that's been nothing but abused to hell and back for imposing artificial scarcity on a non-scarce good and locking up information, art and culture - to the detriment of society as a whole.

People need to stop believing this myth about the historical origins and purpose of copyright, which is spread and propagated by the very same people who invented and depend on copyright to protect their business model.

Joakal• 14 years ago

To be fair, the earliest form of copyright was a tool of government and church oppression in order to restrict access to information (including bibles).

mhartl• 14 years ago

I'm thrilled to see this. Michael Blake is an amazing talent, and this case was total BS. It did have a cool side-effect, though: partially as a result of these legal pi problems, Michael made an even more awesome composition based on the digits of tau = 6.283185..., which you can see here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3174T-3-59Q

As the author of The Tau Manifesto, that warms the cockles of my heart.

Judge Chooses Pi Day To Reject Lawsuit Over Attempt To Copyright Pi As A Song

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