Hold on. We'll get to abuse of copyright shortly.
My brother, now retired or, rather, retiring (it's the nature of his job that his retirement must transpire in a series of premeditated chess moves), has moved to a small town a half-hour away. In the early nineties I dated a woman who lived there. She dwelled across from the town's small park. I visited often and drove back late, listening to Anik satellite broadcasts. The places I remember are difficult to find thirty years on, engulfed now by a sprawling bedroom community of great houses, incomplete roads, and absent streetlights.
My brother and his wife moved to be nearer their daughters and their daughters' families. He hosted the lot of us on the thirtieth.
(We saw my sisters on Christmas. My wife sang the night before; we left in the morning for Toronto. On Boxing Day, I went with my sister Jo to see A Complete Unknown, long, as contemporary movies trend, but we enjoyed it. Timothée Chalamet becomes Zimmerman).
Which brings us to tonight, and my issue with copyright.
For some years now my wife and I have stayed inside on New Year's Eve, roasted a duck, toasted the spin in front of a screen. We're going out this year, a restaurant across from our local park where popular celebrations unfold. We'll take a tour after eating and then return to our house, where we're meeting friends, in front of the screen again.
We have a Moët et Chandon. Since we don't have a pretty cabinet, we shall have to drink it.
I spent the afternoon of the 30th engaged in my most compromising pastime, playing with AI. While I would not use it in my writing, I take inspiration from anywhere, and that might include the scenes I've generated. Phrases like "reptilian-dieselpunk-psychedelic-fungal alien" occasionally turn up something that transcends the program's learning models and stolen images. Consider: Two old men, one a veteran, and a rainforest-hued frog-lizard with intelligent eyes, sit in a retro-forties traveller's cabin, sharing a drink with a reptilian alien who sports stylish fungal hair. He wears a jacket suggesting some old school or past service, and whateverpunk goggles.
I may have to write about that. The image may be the machine's, but the story will be mine. Of three stories I'm currently shopping, one sits currently before a place that won't accept anything from AI, even inspiration. I'll have to keep their prohibition in mind, of course.
None of my current pieces have any connection to AI.
Using these images I assembled a New Year's card for my friends in SF and liked the results so much that I decided to post it publicly. It consists of people and aliens at parties and gatherings and New Year's Eve sorts of celebrations.
I found a 1930s recording of "Auld Lang Syne" to incorporate with the soundtrack, which is supposed to sound like New Year's Eve, with aliens. The song obviously has no copyright issues, even if Google's AI sporadically identifies it as "a song by Rod Stewart." The lyrics more typically get attributed to Robbie Burns. The truth's more complex than that, but Burns's credit's closer to truth than Rod's, and sets us back to the un-copyrighted eighteenth century. The tune likely derives from one written by William Shield in the 1780s. The words and music first appear together (in print, at least) in 1799. I could not determine if this particular performance, by Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians, remains under protection. Certainly, it has been much-reproduced without incident. Lombardo, who comes from my adopted home town, in any case, has been dead since '77, and made a lot of money, He began playing "Auld Lang Syne" on New Year's Eve nearly 100 years ago. I felt pretty secure using it as the audio in the background of my virtual party. The rest of the soundtrack has been assembled from fragments of crowd noises, animals sounds, distortion, and fireworks. Seemed safe. And it's not as though I'm making money off of this.
I immediately received a copyright claim from Sony Music and could not post publicly.
They, or, at least, their AI, claims that the video violates their ownership of Gene Autry's "He's a Chubby Little Fellow." This holiday novelty song from 1950 is noteworthy for the fact that it sounds entirely unlike "Auld Lang Syne." Nor do singing cowboys sound much like syrupy orchestras. I've challenged their claim on principle, because this is the kind of copyright bullying for which SM, in particular, has become notorious. If they'd nicked me on Lombardo, I would have accepted it.
I had to lie just to get the process started. In order to challenge a claim, one has to first choose from a selection of general reasons why one is making the challenge. "That's not even the material that I used" is not on the list.
Of course, the copyright claim has the same effect, regardless of it carrying about the same weight as the average campaign promise. In order to post it in time for the morning of New Year's Eve, I needed to create a version with a changed soundtrack. I found a supposedly copyright-free cover of "Auld Lang Syne," posted by one DJ Williams, and redid the video with that. As we had to leave for my brother's, I finished with a less-than-impressive sound balance. The video's very small punchline is a suggestion to celebrate and spend time with your sorts of folks, the ones who get you.
Life involves a lot of working with people who don't. And that's when things are going reasonably well. Right now, much is not going well in the world.
The potentially scarier sides of 2025 (as I see them) I will address in a future post.
Happy New Year! Move forward with hope!
Video here.
Update, January 30, 2025:
Good news! Your dispute wasn't reviewed within 30 days, so the copyright claim on your YouTube video has now been released.
Video title: New Year's Eve 2025
Thanks,
The YouTube team