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

TEDx Talks · 345.9K views · 2020-01-30 · 17:58

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Overview

Lawyer and musician Damien Riehl argues that music is math with a finite number of melodies, and describes how he and programmer Noah Rubin generated every possible melody and released them under CC0 to avoid accidental infringement claims.

On Hacker News

HN cites it as the stunt behind 'copyright every melody' in threads about music copyright, takedowns and AI authorship.

Recommended by 1 HN people across 1 months · HN mentions 2020–2026

Topics

Law, policing & justiceMusic performance & songsIdeas & learning (other)
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melody copyrightcc0infringementmusic lawalgorithmic generation

What people said

adamredwoods · 2023-05 · Recommendation

They did a great Tedx talk here, and the person effectively describes the problems that Sheeran has run into: [VIDEO]

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alwa · 2026-06 · Reference

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] [VIDEO] and [LINK]

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rainbowzootsuit · 2023-10 · Reference

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

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Sources

Video by TEDx Talks, played through YouTube.

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