> In an alternative reality where the players agreed that they were creating a creative work together, and signed the copyright to it over contractually, would your attitude change?
Yes, that would probably be the same (in general) as any other work-for-hire.
> Can you talk a little bit about why a very short riff such as 10-12 notes of this [...] should be subject to copyright?
I imagine it is subject to copyright, a Haiku would be.
The grey areas here are that such a short sequence lends itself to brute-forcing which isn't creative and probably wouldn't result in a copyright, and that independent creators would each have their own copyright. You can't just generate all possible books (even if not combinatorially impossible) and block authors from writing them.
> I find this very very hard to believe. If I came up with simple rules for transcribing a chess game with notes and then discovered that for a particular chess game this was pleasant, you really don't think I could copyright that tune?
Your program to do this would be copyrightable, but it would only produce a machine-translation (by definition) of the chess game so while the end results (the tune) be copyrightable, it wouldn't be your copyright.
Yes, that would probably be the same (in general) as any other work-for-hire.
> Can you talk a little bit about why a very short riff such as 10-12 notes of this [...] should be subject to copyright?
I imagine it is subject to copyright, a Haiku would be.
The grey areas here are that such a short sequence lends itself to brute-forcing which isn't creative and probably wouldn't result in a copyright, and that independent creators would each have their own copyright. You can't just generate all possible books (even if not combinatorially impossible) and block authors from writing them.
> I find this very very hard to believe. If I came up with simple rules for transcribing a chess game with notes and then discovered that for a particular chess game this was pleasant, you really don't think I could copyright that tune?
Your program to do this would be copyrightable, but it would only produce a machine-translation (by definition) of the chess game so while the end results (the tune) be copyrightable, it wouldn't be your copyright.