From the gut? Questions on Artificial Intelligence and music

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 503-513
Author(s):  
Florian Koempel ◽  

AI applications are manifold in the music industry, both as tools assisting composers in creating and as music generating machines. AI applications assisting composers are widely used, for example in providing drum sequences or mastering services. AI-generated music is mainly used as production music, for example in synchronizing YouTube videos. Copyright implications relate initially to the use of existing works to train the computer, and secondly to the copyright protection for AI-generated musical works or sound recordings. This article firstly looks at the copyright acts involved in the training process in the EU, UK and US as well as potentially applicable exceptions. Secondly, it addresses the copyright position of AI-generated music and in particular the legal requirement of human creativity as the basis of copyright protection for musical works. The situation for sound recordings might be different.

Author(s):  
Jyh-An Lee

Copyright protection in some commonwealth jurisdictions extends to computer-generated works. Although many scholars deem the right over computer-generated works to be a neighbouring right, it is still not clear under what circumstances a work is a computer-generated work. With the increasing application of artificial intelligence (AI), the copyright controversies associated with computer-generated works have become even more complicated. This chapter focuses on policy and legal issues surrounding the output of AI and copyright protection of computer-generated work under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act (CDPA) 1988 in the UK. The CDPA approach to computer-generated work deviates from the mainstream international copyright practices, where human creativity is essential for authorship and copyright protection. From a policy perspective, it is important to explore whether this deviation can be justified. This chapter also investigates authorship issues concerning computer-generated works based on case law and its application, in particular who the person making the necessary arrangements is, and what the necessary arrangements in the AI environment are. Other issues relevant to computer-generated work, such as copyright term and joint authorship will be analysed as well.


Author(s):  
L. Bently ◽  
B. Sherman ◽  
D. Gangjee ◽  
P. Johnson

This chapter examines the debate over the question of the appropriate period of protection that ought to be granted to copyright works, with emphasis on literary, dramatic, musical, and artistic works as well as films and entrepreneurial works (sound recordings, broadcasts, and typographical arrangements of published editions). It begins by considering the provisions of the EU Term Directive with regards to the duration of protection for such works and then discusses a number of exceptions to the general rule that the duration of copyright works is life plus 70 years. It also analyses moral rights of integrity and attribution in the UK in relation to copyright, as well as the so-called publication right in works in which copyright has lapsed. The chapter concludes with an assessment of the optimal term of copyright protection.


2001 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 163
Author(s):  
Nicholas Stuart Wood

Traditionally, moral rights have not extended to the creators of sound recordings under either common law or civil law systems. The somewhat outdated rationale of this exclusion of sound recordings from the ambit of moral rights protection was generally that sound recordings were merely mechanical reproductions of already existing musical works, and hence the recordings lacked sufficient creativity to make them worthy of moral rights protection. In 1996, the WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty sought to remedy this anomaly in copyright law by extending the moral rights of paternity and of integrity to performers whose performances are fixed in sound recordings.This paper argues that New Zealand should follow WIPO's lead and extend the moral rights provisions of the Copyright Act 1994 to sound recordings. The author argues that sound recordings are imbued with sufficient creativity to merit moral rights protection and that this protection should be granted not only to performers but to sound engineers and producers, who also contribute creatively to the recording. This paper examines how moral rights in relation to sound recordings might work in practice and what remedies should be available for breach of these rights. The author concludes that the extension of moral rights to sound recordings need not impact detrimentally on the music industry, as some commentators fear.


Author(s):  
Paul Torremans

This chapter discusses the duration of copyright protection in the UK. The basic rule is that the term of copyright has been harmonized at life of the author plus 70 years in the EU. The basic rule applies to the original category of works (literary, dramatic, musical, and artistic works) and to films. Entrepreneurial works, such as sound recordings and broadcasts, receive 50 years of copyright protection. Performances fixated in a phonogram will in future be protected for 70 years. The term of protection for typographical arrangements is 25 years.


Author(s):  
Robert O. Gjerdingen

The original music conservatories were orphanages. Through innovative teaching methods the masters of these old institutions were able to transform poor and often illiterate castoffs into elite musicians, many of whom became famous in the history of classical music. The book tells the story of how this was done. It shows what the lessons were like, what a typical day was like for an orphan, and how children progressed from simple lessons to ones more advanced than any seen today in colleges and universities. Recent rediscoveries of thousands of the old lessons have allowed us to understand how children’s minds were systematically developed to be able to “think” in music. That is, the lessons slowly built up the mental ability to imagine the interplay of two or more voices or instruments. Today we think of Mozart as having a miraculous ability to imagine musical works in his head, but in truth many of the conservatory graduates of that era had attained a similar level of controlled musical imagination. They could improvise for hours at the keyboard, and they could quickly compose whole works for ensembles. The book is accompanied by 100 YouTube videos so that readers can hear what the lessons sounded like.


BioTech ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 15
Author(s):  
Takis Vidalis

The involvement of artificial intelligence in biomedicine promises better support for decision-making both in conventional and research medical practice. Yet two important issues emerge in relation to personal data handling, and the influence of AI on patient/doctor relationships. The development of AI algorithms presupposes extensive processing of big data in biobanks, for which procedures of compliance with data protection need to be ensured. This article addresses this problem in the framework of the EU legislation (GDPR) and explains the legal prerequisites pertinent to various categories of health data. Furthermore, the self-learning systems of AI may affect the fulfillment of medical duties, particularly if the attending physicians rely on unsupervised applications operating beyond their direct control. The article argues that the patient informed consent prerequisite plays a key role here, not only in conventional medical acts but also in clinical research procedures.


Author(s):  
Wael H. Awad ◽  
Bruce N. Janson

Three different modeling approaches were applied to explain truck accidents at interchanges in Washington State during a 27-month period. Three models were developed for each ramp type including linear regression, neural networks, and a hybrid system using fuzzy logic and neural networks. The study showed that linear regression was able to predict accident frequencies that fell within one standard deviation from the overall mean of the dependent variable. However, the coefficient of determination was very low in all cases. The other two artificial intelligence (AI) approaches showed a high level of performance in identifying different patterns of accidents in the training data and presented a better fit when compared to the regression model. However, the ability of these AI models to predict test data that were not included in the training process showed unsatisfactory results.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Koray Güven

Abstract The recent Cofemel judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union extended the European Union’s (EU) originality criterion (i.e. the author’s own intellectual creation) to the realm of works of applied art. The Court excluded ‘aesthetically significant visual effect’ as a condition of copyright protection. It was condemned as subjective and incompatible with the EU originality criterion. The decision may signal a shift in several national copyright laws, under which requirements relating to ‘aesthetics’ are laid down as a condition to acquire protection. This article will demonstrate that the ‘aesthetics criterion’, as it emerged historically and has been employed in national copyright laws, is associated with a different meaning than it conveys at first glance. The aesthetics criterion designates the elbow room remaining to the author after functional constraints have been taken into account, and thus represents a form of the functionality doctrine in the domain of copyright law. However, to some extent it also excludes – though not uniformly – commonplace designs from the scope of copyright protection. Against this background, this article suggests that the aesthetics criterion can arguably be reconciled with the EU originality criterion. The aesthetics criterion represents a balance struck between the need for copyright protection in the field of applied arts, on the one hand, and competition, on the other. In order not to upset this careful balance, a robust application of the EU originality criterion is advocated, precluding protection not only to functionality, but also to commonplace creations.


Author(s):  
J.-M. Deltorn ◽  
Franck Macrez

A new generation of machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) creative tools are now at the disposal of musicians, professionals and amateurs alike. These new technical intermediaries allow the production of unprecedented forms of compositions, from generating new works by mimicking a style or by mixing a curated ensemble of musical works to letting an algorithm complete one’s own creation in unexpected directions or by letting an artist interact with the parameters of a neural network to explore fresh musical avenues. Unsurprisingly, this new spectrum of algorithmic compositions question both the nature and the degree of involvement of the creator in the musical work. As a consequence, the issue of authorship and, in particular, the assessment of the specific contribution of a (human) creator through the algorithmic pipeline may require special scrutiny when AI and ML tools are used to produce musical works.


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