Copyright Claimed on Telephone Tones

awful writes: "Two composers in Australia have copyrighted over 100,000,000,000 phone tone dialing sequences. They state in the article that they are lampooning copyright laws that protect big business rather than artists. Their website has more info and explains how they did it. You can check your number and make sure it hasn't been copyrighted by these guys. They have already recieved one offer of money - from a guy who wanted to purchase the copyright to his number so he could stop direct marketing firms from calling him." Somehow I don't think the inventors of DTMF envisioned this. Update: 10/04 14:11 GMT by M : There's a US mirror available.

prior art? :)

[brood]

Jenny, Jenny who can I turn to
You give me something I can hold on to
I know you'll think I'm like the others before
Who saw your name and number on the wall
Jenny I've got your number
I need to make you mine
Jenny don't change your number
8 6 7-5 3 0 9

Rotary

[NitsujTPU]

Well, now I'll have to get a rotary cell phone so I can call home without paying royalties!

Turn about is fair play (pun intended)

[Soko]

Ooo!Ooo! I know what these guys can do for us - sue Hillary Rosen or any RIAA member when they have to call each other in order to make thier little cabal plans. Could you imagine the scowl on her *cough*lovely*cough* face?

Soko

And pulse too...

[Quasar1999]

I just copyrighted all the possible combinations of pulse dialing tones too... ahhahahahhah... you all owe me 0.05 cents per use... I'm rich!! I'm rich!!! ahaahhahahha

A good use for copyright

[beretboy]

I forsee the following dialouge:

Me: hello?

Tele-solicitor: Hello would you like to buy-

Me: You have just infringed on national copyright hangup now or I will seize all your assets!

Tele-solicitor: *click*

Ah finally a good use for copyright :-)

312-2333

[dghcasp]

The canonical phone song: "Mary had a li-tle lamb." Is that prior art or public domain?

Good thing I'm not six years old anymore and no longer so easilly amused; I'd hate to have to retain a lawyer just to determine if I could do that; especially on a six-year-old's allowance.

Thats it, time to take action

[Seemlar]

So, who wants to help me encode all these 100,000,000,000 possible ringtones and put them on Morpheus?

Re:That covers every phone number in existence

[plaisted]

Yeah well it's funny that you can check to see if your number has been copyrighted, when you can be sure it has been.

Reading the site, it's pretty much clear that it's a hoax/joke. A pretty funny one:

Q - I do not wish to purchase a Magnus-Opus licence - what is the best way to dis-continue the use and dispose of my telecommunications device?

A - Magnus-Opus can offer several useful suggestions regarding the disposal of redundant telecommunications technology. We call this our three R's strategy.

Return
Return your telecommunications device to your service provider and/or supplier together with a legal demand for a full refund of the product and services. The service provider and/or supplier may well have failed to inform you, as the customer, of the full copyright implications of the use of such products and services and may, therefore, be legally liable to pay compensation for the loss of amenity. Make sure to send a photocopy of your original receipt and/or contract as evidence of proof of purchase.

Recycle
...

Reuse
...

Re:Nice idea, but won't work

[Soko]

Quote:

So, even if they have a phone number in their melody database, you don't infringe if you dial that number, because you created the melody independently.

I think you're right.

Crap! There goes my evil little plan to copyright any sequence of four numbers, where each number is between zero and 255, when separated by periods. ;-)

Soko

Re:Not what copyright was for.

[smack_attack]

STEP 1: Place hand 3 inches above head and 3 inches in front of head.
STEP 2: Briskly move hand from previous position to 3 inches above head and 6 inches behind head.

867-5309

[Arkoth]

Tommy Tutone be warned. Prepare to be sued by some rich guy with a lawyer waiting to
serve him that owns the patent to the phone number 867-5309 that you illegally sang
back in the 70s.

You will be sued, resistance is futile!

Pulse/rotary dialing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't worry people, we'll all still be able to call one another because I just got through Copylefting every pulse/rotary number.

So we're cool.

Re:Copyright does not squash other independant wor

[Anonymous Coward]

If a million monkeys type out the source code to MS Office, Microsoft can't sue.

The problem is that you'll need 256^{size of MS Office in bytes} monkeys to get MS Office. Phone numbers only required 10^11 monkeys, so it was possible to simulate the process with a computer.

DMCA Violations

[AnalogDiehard]

Well this means that every online yellow/white pages directory is now in violation of the DMCA.

And while we're at it, we'll have to dispose of our phonebooks since they are now vulnerable to lawsuits of patent infringement.

I wouldn't be surprised if someone were to patent IP addresses.

Re:That covers every phone number in existence

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, because they only have telephones in the USA.

Re:And pulse too...

[AntiNorm]

I just copyrighted all the possible combinations of pulse dialing tones too... ahhahahahhah... you all owe me 0.05 cents per use... I'm rich!! I'm rich!!! ahaahhahahha

Just copyright all pulses, period. That way, for example, if someone causes a 500 Hz tone to be emitted, you'd be owed .05c * (500 Hz) = 25 cents per second. Not too bad if you ask me.

Re:Copyright does not squash other independant wor

[jmv]

If a million monkeys type out the source code to MS Office.

Isn't that how it was written in the first place anyway?

Don't Check Your Number in their Database

[Omerna]

If a million monkeys type out the source code to MS Office, Microsoft can't sue. Likewise, if you happen to create a series of dual-tone meta frequency notes using a touch-tone phone using non-copyrighted material (a phone book, your memory, etc), then that's an independant creation. Now if a telemarketer overheard you dialing, and recorded it (made a copy), then you might have something.

According to this, I think, if I check to see if my number or somebody I know's number is in there, and it is, and then I use it I'll have gotten help from copyrighted material to dial that number. I'm infringing their copyright every time I dial a number after I see it there. Q.E.D that website is a trap to make you infringe their copyright! Don't be fooled!

Re:Not what copyright was for.

[dstone]

If you were smart, you'd copyright those instructions. ;-)

A new trend

[Anonymous Coward]

Sheesh! Next time, you'll be seing DTMF tones on Napster or your favorite P2P service, and they get to after them and shut 'em down.

Oh wait....

How close are they?

[Anonymous Coward]

People don't seem to have noticed that finicky little disclaimer under the score of their telephone number:
"Notation is an approximation only of the real pitch."
(See: http://www.magnus-opus.com/number_check.html)

The Equitempered Scale (or Equal Tempered Scale, depending on who you talk to) has pretty much been the standard for musical notes for the last 200 years, although the standard for A4 was only ratified as 440Hz in 1939.

The frequencies used for DTMF tones don't exactly match notes on the Equitempered Scale. I have tabulated the differences here:

Matching against the Equitempered scale:
(Based on http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/music/e t.html#c2)
DTMF_tone Closest_Note %-error
697Hz F5, 698.46Hz +0.2095%
770Hz G5, 783.99Hz +1.8169%
852Hz G5#, 830.61Hz -2.5106%
941Hz A5#, 932.33Hz -0.9214%
1209Hz D6, 1174.6Hz -2.8453%
1336Hz E6, 1318.5Hz -1.3099%
1477Hz F6#, 1480.0Hz +0.2031%
1633Hz G6#, 1661.2Hz +1.7269%

As you can see, there are some considerable differences from a "purist" point of view.

This begs the question: Have the Magnus-Opus musicians actually copyrighted DTMF tone sequences, or just an approximation of them?

Another question worth asking: Even if the copyright holds-up, is it the end-users who are liable for infringement, or the Telco's who are on-selling the numbers as their own property?

--------
Eletus99

Microsoft Patents 1's, 0's

[drodver]

Whenever one of these crazy copyright/patent stories comes up I am reminded of the story Microsoft Patents Ones, Zeros [theonion.com].

Re:Copyright does not squash other independant wor

[unitron]

"Isn't that how it was written in the first place anyway?"

If it had been done at random by monkeys there would be fewer bugs. Now aplogise for insulting the monkeys.

Re:Rotary

[haystor]

I'm afraid the DMCA will bite you on the ass for circumventing.

Re:Copyright does not squash other independant wor

[wirefarm]

Map makers used to put in little false details here and there to make sure their maps weren't being copied. A street here or there that didn't exist in real life.
I always thought that was fiendishly clever.
I wonder if they still do it - I've always suspected that Montana doesn't really exist...
Cheers,
Jim in Tokyo

Worst Slashdot Lawyers Ever!

[Jerf]

I award this article the Worst Slashdot Lawyers Ever award. Not a single legally valid opinion is ranked above 3. Several utterly uninformed opinions are ranked at 4 or 5. Half the replies miss the point. Absolutely amazingly horrible. A record high noise/signal ratio. Wow.

Please for Gnu's sake don't whip off a letter to your Congresscritter based on this article; most posters have already looked stupid enough.

(Oh, in case you're wondering, the subject of this article is a funny-chortle, but no more. It has all the legal force of a Taliban edict in this country.)

Where else but slashdot...

[wirefarm]

Where else but slashdot does a person get to make a post like mine and have someone step through the crowd and say "I'm a cartographer..."
Sometimes I really like slashdot.
Thanks -
Jim in Tokyo (IANAC)

A million monkeys

[dzurn]

A million monkeys could type out all of Microsoft's source code?

Ha! So that would explain [insert MS product name here] !

{BTW, all possible software-product permutations of this joke are hereby copyrighted, so this IS on-topic.}

Re:prior art? :)

[dumbunny]

I can give you one better than 867-5309. There was a song by Sugarloaf called "Don't Call Us We'll Call You" (1975) in which they actually play the recorded, long distance, touchtone, telephone number of a record executive who had rejected them earlier. IIRC, the executive had to change his number shortly after the song became popular.

Re:312-2333

[e7]

Nope. The harmonies are totally different from how "Mary ..." is traditionally performed.

(I've listened to the above DTMF sequence several times now, and the lady on the other end obviously doesn't understand how the slashdot effect could carry over into her legacy communications system.)

537-0869

[ConceptJunkie]

My phone number in 1980 when that song was big was an anagram of Jenny's number. I always wondered if I would get a call from some dyslexic rock fan.

Re:Rotary

[mosha48]

Then why not replace the current sounds by noises ? 1- Siren 2- Dog Barking 3- Cow ... 9 - Bang Thus, 911 would be Bang ! Siren, Siren...

Re:That covers every phone number in existence

[nmg196]

It doesn't cover the 'international' form of the number, so people can dial me from abroad royalty free!

eg: 00 44 1234 123456 (which is 14 digits)

These people are evil.

Nick..

Whole new Business model

[Martin Spamer]

This suggest a whole new business/income model. Perhaps we should patent it before some corporate monster does :)

1) Copyright your number, including dial tone.
2) Allways complete your phone-number on forms, and request for information. Include notification that use of your number is by licence only.
3) Receive call(s).
4) Charge abusers licence fee.

1800 COLLECT

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, all those tv commercials (call 1800 collect) use the dial tone in their commercials. that's clear infringement!

P. Diddy.

[viper21]

You just wait until P. Diddy starts sampling these tunes.

I bet He buys J-Lo's new number.

in other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft have licensed the tones for thier support line numbers. The cost will be added into the support costs and made retroactive for 10 years.