Hello Nicolai,

Great you join in I love that, my compliments!

Ofcourse I disagree to a certain point, as I clearly stated.

First of all I agree ofcourse that in styles which contain a unique melody line or styles which are song specific there's ofcourse copyright.
But these aren't standard styles!
These specific styles are part of a song and can only be used in that unique specific song.
Which makes it clearly copyright.
Even more for midi's ofcourse as these are
complete songs.
There's a lot of jurisdiction about this, which would go way beyond this board, but roughly you could say that IF a song has MORE as 16 bars equal to 8 seconds and are simular to an existing song you have a copyright problem.

But on STANDARD styles (Which is exactly what I wrote) you cannot claim copyright.
The binary code cannot be heard and does not make any sense either as it won't be the same after editing or style conversion.
And the STANDARD styles are CALLED Standard styles because they appeal to a common spread MUSIC style.
Which basicly is the answer WHY you cannot have copyright on STANDARD styles.

The example you gave about painting's is great by the way and gives a good example how complicated these matters are.
For your info; it is ALLOWED to PAINT a copy of the original painting as long as you don't put the signature of the original masterpainter on it!
It is NOT ALLOWED to publish without permission a photo from the original painting as this would make a perfect copy and needs permission.

Personally I do think you should protect your work and you have the right to do so and I will be the last to encourage free publishing of someone elses work. But legally I think you have a very weak case with the standard styles.

Greetings,
Fred