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Comment by oz | Hacker News Reader

Yes, we all know that "great artists steal." And of course, every musician has been inspired by some one before. There are only so many chords. But that's a red herring.

When musicians directly copy another's work, i.e., sampling, don't they need to get permission? And if the owner of sampled work says "no, you can't have it", then that's that.

Again, easy to do =! ethical.

Mass surveillance has become widespread. Deal with it.

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Sampling isn't the only way to directly copying other peoples music.

Musicians who play covers are required to arrange licensing fees.

We aren't just talking about covers.

We are talking about passages, melodies, riffs, fills, rythms etc.

It is much more complex than you seem to be aware of.

That's a weird thing to say. These are all questions that copyright jurisprudence has had to deal with. The copyrightability of riffs should be well known to anyone who watched MTV in the Vanilla Ice years.

Why? Playing a melody over a different chord progression or a re-arragned progression, different instrument, add a few lifts etc. the possibilities are litterally endless.

You can't apply copyright to these things unless they are blatantly obvious, which they in most cases aren't and not something that really matters to the bigger picture.

But the actual act of copying them. Most music is composed that way.

Thats also called inspiration. Which is just a nicer way of saying a less obvious way of copying.

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