Singing from the same sheet: computational melodic similarity measurement and copyright law

Musical plagiarism is an area of law that is not only of interest to lawyers but captures the curiosity of the public, induces apprehension in the composer and now intrigues the computer scientist. Attention increases in the case of celebrated artists when the revenue is likely to be significant, and when the allegation is one of a perceived similarity between the infringing and infringed works. Despite the broad interest and frequently high commercial significance of this issue, there has been little systematic research into what constitutes musical plagiarism from either a technical or perceptual perspective.

This article discusses some suggestions made to date for introducing a technical measurement of musical similarity in copyright disputes before presenting our own computational system. The novelty of our proposal arises from an interdisciplinary approach combining computational, musicological, and psychological perspectives to emulate legal principles, mimic the reasonable listener as well as copy the type of evidence often presented in these cases.