Download, Stream, or Somewhere in Between: The Potential for Legal Music Use in Podcasting

Podcasting is an increasingly popular new digital technology with the potential to be a great conduit of expression. Currently, the use of music is limited in podcasting due in large part to uncertainty as to what rights must be licensed before copyrighted music can be used legitimately. This iBrief examines what legal rights are implicated by podcasting by analyzing U.S. copyright law and comparing related technologies. This iBrief concludes that onerous licensing requirements are unnecessary, and for podcasting to realize its potential, a simple licensing framework must be established

Electronic Locator of Vertical Interval Successions (ELVIS): The first large data-driven research project on musical style

The ELVIS project had three locally based teams (in Canada, at McGill, in Scotland, at Aberdeen, and in New England, USA, divided between MIT, the lead, and Yale), each of which focused on a different aspect of the overall research program: using computers to understand musical style. The central unifying concept of the ELVIS project was to study counterpoint: the way combinations of voices in polyphonic music (e.g. the soprano and bass voices in a hymn, or the viola and cello in a string quartet, as well as combinations of more than two voices) interact: i.e. what are the permissible vertical intervals (notes from two voices sounding at the same time) for a particular period, genre, or style. These vertical intervals, connected by melodic motions in individual voices, constitute Vertical Interval Successions. In more modern terms, this could be described as harmonic progressions of chords, but what made ELVIS particularly flexible was its ability to bridge the gap to earlier, contrapuntally-conceived music by using the diad (a two-note combination) rather than the triad (a combination of three notes in particular arrangements) as a basis (since triads and beyond may be expressed as sums of diads)

Closing the loop: assisting archival appraisal and information retrieval in one sweep

In this article, we examine the similarities between the concept of appraisal, a process that takes place within the archives, and the concept of relevance judgement, a process fundamental to the evaluation of information retrieval systems. More specifically, we revisit selection criteria proposed as result of archival research, and work within the digital curation communities, and, compare them to relevance criteria as discussed within information retrieval's literature based discovery. We illustrate how closely these criteria relate to each other and discuss how understanding the relationships between the these disciplines could form a basis for proposing automated selection for archival processes and initiating multi-objective learning with respect to information retrieval

Musical Musings: The Case for Rethinking Music Copyright Protection

This Article focuses on the topic of music copyright, but addresses this legal issue from a different vantage point than that of the industry insiders, insightful scholars, and policy makers that have weighed in on the debate. Instead of focusing on the issues regarding wholesale digital reproduction and dissemination of music protected by copyright, this Article focuses on music copyright infringement when the claim is that a given piece of music is substantially similar to another piece of music protected by copyright. Part I of this Article touches on the history of the music industry and copyright in this country, as well as the legal standard developed and used by the federal judiciary in assessing whether a given piece of music infringes upon another musical work. Examination of these histories will help illuminate the shortcomings of the music copyright legal doctrine in the succeeding sections. Part II of this Article discusses the unique attributes possessed by music and why these attributes call for treating music differently than other works of authorship under copyright law. Part III shifts from policy to pragmatics. Not only is the current test for copyright infringement ill-suited based on the unique characteristics of music, the test also has significant practical problems that need to be addressed and remedied. This test--the substantially similar test--is flawed because it assumes that there is only one reasonable way to perceive a piece of music. This flaw is perpetuated by two factual assumptions underlying the analysis: not-so-expert testimony and aurally challenged jurors. Part IV posits a new paradigm for dealing with music copyright when the claim is that a piece of music is substantially similar to a preexisting musical work protected by copyright. Instead of having a regime that restricts musical borrowing, we should have a system that encourages this practice, so long as the second composer pays the first composer pursuant to a compulsory license. Implementing this compulsory license requirement squares with the underlying realities of the music world. Moreover, the beneficial byproducts of such a system are manifest and include predictability, judicial economy, and pecuniary incentives flowing to music copyright holders and the music copyright borrowers

Bridging Geospatial and Semantic Worlds: Enhancing Analysis of Place-Based Concepts in GIS

People’s actions and behaviours contribute to the diversity and personality of a space, transforming it into a vibrant and thriving living environment. The main goal of this research is to present a GIS-based framework for assessing places. The framework is constructed based on the idea of conceptual spaces, integrating spatial and semantic concepts inside a geometric structure. The explanation of place-related concepts is achieved via the use of linear programming and convex polytopes. By projecting these concepts into the spatial domain, a strong connection between geographical and semantic space is established. This connection allows a wide range of analytical calculations using geographic information systems to be carried out. The study focuses on the sense of city centre in Tehran, Iran, by employing questionnaires administrated on-site to evaluate the correlation between identified city centres and the participants’ responses. The findings demonstrate a good correlation, as shown by a Pearson correlation value of 0.74 and a rank correlation coefficient of 0.8. Interestingly, the city centres that were selected did not always align with the geographic centre. However, participants still perceived them as city centres. This framework serves as a valuable tool for planners and policymakers, providing a comprehensive understanding of the built environment. By considering both semantic and geographical aspects, the framework emphasises the importance of emotions, memories, and meanings in creating an inclusive environment

Musical Musings: The Case for Rethinking Music Copyright Protection

This Article focuses on the topic of music copyright, but addresses this legal issue from a different vantage point than that of the industry insiders, insightful scholars, and policy makers that have weighed in on the debate. Instead of focusing on the issues regarding wholesale digital reproduction and dissemination of music protected by copyright, this Article focuses on music copyright infringement when the claim is that a given piece of music is substantially similar to another piece of music protected by copyright. Part I of this Article touches on the history of the music industry and copyright in this country, as well as the legal standard developed and used by the federal judiciary in assessing whether a given piece of music infringes upon another musical work. Examination of these histories will help illuminate the shortcomings of the music copyright legal doctrine in the succeeding sections. Part II of this Article discusses the unique attributes possessed by music and why these attributes call for treating music differently than other works of authorship under copyright law. Part III shifts from policy to pragmatics. Not only is the current test for copyright infringement ill-suited based on the unique characteristics of music, the test also has significant practical problems that need to be addressed and remedied. This test--the substantially similar test--is flawed because it assumes that there is only one reasonable way to perceive a piece of music. This flaw is perpetuated by two factual assumptions underlying the analysis: not-so-expert testimony and aurally challenged jurors. Part IV posits a new paradigm for dealing with music copyright when the claim is that a piece of music is substantially similar to a preexisting musical work protected by copyright. Instead of having a regime that restricts musical borrowing, we should have a system that encourages this practice, so long as the second composer pays the first composer pursuant to a compulsory license. Implementing this compulsory license requirement squares with the underlying realities of the music world. Moreover, the beneficial byproducts of such a system are manifest and include predictability, judicial economy, and pecuniary incentives flowing to music copyright holders and the music copyright borrowers

Social software for music

Tese de mestrado integrado. Engenharia Informática e Computação. Faculdade de Engenharia. Universidade do Porto. 200

CHORUS Deliverable 2.1: State of the Art on Multimedia Search Engines

Based on the information provided by European projects and national initiatives related to multimedia search as well as domains experts that participated in the CHORUS Think-thanks and workshops, this document reports on the state of the art related to multimedia content search from, a technical, and socio-economic perspective. The technical perspective includes an up to date view on content based indexing and retrieval technologies, multimedia search in the context of mobile devices and peer-to-peer networks, and an overview of current evaluation and benchmark inititiatives to measure the performance of multimedia search engines. From a socio-economic perspective we inventorize the impact and legal consequences of these technical advances and point out future directions of research