Is there something so original that is has its own origin?
"Yes, my work. My work is entirely original. It has its own origin."
Which implies: "It came ex nihilo directly from the mind of God. So I can not allow anyone to borrow some patterns from it to get a bit of vocabulary, and then painly, slowly try to articulate their own phrases with these bits of vocabulary. They can't borrow to me, because such godly works are sacred."
At the end of that logic is a kind of anti-baroque: "No one shall learn. I shall be the only one authorized to make music."
Come on! Stop that beethovenian crap. We're not God. We're just guys. We constantly borrow. What should it be next? Should we copyright notes? Chords? Scales? Instruments? Cadenzas? Where is the frontier?
If a given line has been varied ten times, does it mean no one of those times can be borrowed? Does it still count with different chords? One different note? Two different notes? Where would be a "fair" barrier in such nonsense case? At the end of a "hard" copyright logic lies a simple conclusion: no one has the legal permission to write music anymore (more precisely: no one has the legal permission to write effective music anymore).
John Cage even invented "chance operations" as a desperate try to avoid replicating something he remembers or something he likes, because he kept doing it without even noticing. Even when he forced himself not to replicate something he likes or remembers, he failed! Hence the invention of "chance operations". So you've got the choice :
- connect with your audience and nod to the fact that whatever you're writing, it's probably unconsciously borrowing stuff your audience will recognize and associate with different moods, emotions, situations, or actions ; it's a bit like borrowing words to phrase your own thing, but don't you think that to yell at "copyright infringement" when a person is merely learning to speak is a murder to future possibilities?
- or do some random bullshit, so random you can not even say "it's my idea, it's my thing" (philosophical problem of attribution with random stuff: a random stuff is no one's work)
I'm a really gifted composer regarding crappy random things nobody can connect to. So I may have a future in a hard copyright legal framework. So I would be really happy if you kept doing these kind of denunciations. At last! Some guys finally open the way for random bullshit composers like me! :-D