So if I take the latest Lady Gaga mp3 and look at the stream of bytes, and if I can find that identical stream of digits in the digits of Pi, does Lady Gaga (or her record company) "own" that portion of Pi? If yes, then WTF!?!? If no, why not, and what does this mean for the idea of copyright, anyway?
Copyright restricts copying, it doesn't restrict similar, or even identical, expressions that are independently generated (a jury may see similarity as evidence of copying, so merely the theoretical possibility that a similar work was independently arrived at doesn't get you a free pass from liability, but similarity itself isn't restricted by copyright.)
So, no, the fact that a sequence of bytes occurs in a particular digital recording doesn't mean that the copyright owner of that recording "owns" that series of bytes. It means they own a specified set of rights in that particular recording.
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So if I take the latest Lady Gaga mp3 and look at the stream of bytes, and if I can find that identical stream of digits in the digits of Pi, does Lady Gaga (or her record company) "own" that portion of Pi? If yes, then WTF!?!? If no, why not, and what does this mean for the idea of copyright, anyway?
Copyright restricts copying, it doesn't restrict similar, or even identical, expressions that are independently generated (a jury may see similarity as evidence of copying, so merely the theoretical possibility that a similar work was independently arrived at doesn't get you a free pass from liability, but similarity itself isn't restricted by copyright.)
So, no, the fact that a sequence of bytes occurs in a particular digital recording doesn't mean that the copyright owner of that recording "owns" that series of bytes. It means they own a specified set of rights in that particular recording.