Concatenative sound synthesis and intellectual property: An analysis of the legal issues surrounding the synthesis of novel sounds from copyright-protected work

Abstract

Concatenative sound synthesis (CSS) is only as good as the database from which it draws its sound units. As in concatenative speech synthesis, “good” sound concatenations require databases rich in sound material. How better to satisfy this than by using the world's entire library of sound recordings? As can be expected, this concatenative fodder includes work protected by copyrights; and some of these rights appear to forbid the use of these works in both the databases used by, and the results of, the CSS algorithm. These pragmatic concerns necessitate a discussion of the ramifications of intellectual property for CSS, not to mention the appropriation in its output. This article addresses these issues with reference to intellectual property law and copyright precedent, particularly in the USA, and assesses the defensibility of using copyright-protected material in CSS.

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to Noah Klug for reviewing the legal accuracy of this manuscript, and providing virtually hundreds of additional references. Many thanks to Robin Reid for insuring its intelligibility. Thanks to fellow micromontagist Noah Creshevsky for his suggestions and enthusiasm for my work. Thanks to my advisor Curtis Roads for his good advice. Finally thanks to the illuminating manuscript reviewers for helping increase and refine the quality of this article. This research is supported in part by NSF IGERT in Interactive Digital Multimedia Grant No. DGE-0221713.