Whose Music?

In going through my news feeds in my “Arts and Letters” category for The Old Reader, I encountered a story by Marina Dunbar about training Artificial Intelligence (AI) models with Elvis Presley songs. The title of this article was “Anthropic sued for allegedly using 274 Elvis Presley songs to train AI models” with the subtitle “Authentic Brands Group says AI company infringed on rights of songs by the King such as Can’t Help Falling in Love.” What amuses me is that this is an interesting case of just what is being infringed.

Jean-Paul-Ègide Martini, composer of the music for “Plaisir d’amour” (source unknown, public domain, from Wikimedia Commons)

Presumably, this as “all about the words.” The music is based on “Plaisir d’amour” (pleasure of love), composed in 1784 by Jean-Paul-Ègide Martini setting words from his contemporary poet Jean-Pierre Claris de Florian. In other words, I doubt that anyone would be able to make a case the Presley’s tune was not public domain! On the other hand, the text for the Presley song was the product of a “committee,” written jointly by Hugo Peretti, Luigi Creatore, and George David Weiss; and it was originally written from the perspective of a woman (“Can't Help Falling in Love with Him”).

As a result, this is only an issue if the copyright for the text was renewed after 28 years; and, if anyone knows about that detail, I would be happy to learn the current status!