> “But Riehl and Rubin’s point, they say, is not actually to obtain legally sound copyrights, but to illustrate that there are a finite number of ways to combine notes to create pop melodies, and these combinations existed before any songwriter actually put them to paper. All of these melodies can be generated and represented mathematically, suggesting that writing the melody for a pop song is, in some ways, a lot like selecting and portraying a pre-existing—and non-copyrightable—mathematical fact.”

Some deep concepts right there. Would the same thing apply to any sequence of things? The AACS cryptographic key? The words in a book? Is there some breakpoint in number of permutations where human creativity and memorable history allow for copyright?