> There's no rule "you can't copyright a generated melody".
If that was so, then no more melodies can be copyrighted after that group that was also mentioned somewhere else in the threads generated (essentially) all melodies, claimed copyright and then released them into the public domain. Alas, there is, even with people claiming copyright on individual generated melodies!
Again, I think the curation is relevant. You can certainly copyright a book, even though "it's somewhere in Pi". If you endlessly calculate fractions of Pi and check them for something interesting, I'm sure you can copyright whatever poem you find.
>If that was so, then no more melodies can be copyrighted after that group that was also mentioned somewhere else in the threads generated (essentially) all melodies, claimed copyright and then released them into the public domain.
Well, that's true.
But
(a) nobody is going to cross-check their melodies against a new copyright claim,
(b) they are not going to claim infrigement against anyone,
So there's that. And even if they did, they'd be thrown out as a joke-submission (the content being "all possible melodies" etc).
But you can submit hundreds of generated melodies, copyright them, and succesfully sue people for infringing of them. The fact that they were generated doesn't change anything.
If that was so, then no more melodies can be copyrighted after that group that was also mentioned somewhere else in the threads generated (essentially) all melodies, claimed copyright and then released them into the public domain. Alas, there is, even with people claiming copyright on individual generated melodies!
Again, I think the curation is relevant. You can certainly copyright a book, even though "it's somewhere in Pi". If you endlessly calculate fractions of Pi and check them for something interesting, I'm sure you can copyright whatever poem you find.