Is there any caselaw on when a sound recording lacks authorship because it was &quot;captured by purely mechanical means without originality of any kind&quot;?
<p>The <a href="https://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ56.pdf" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Copyright Office circular 56</a>, seemingly quoting the <a href="https://law.justia.com/codes/us/1998/title17/chap1/sec102/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">House report for the Copyright Act of 1976</a>, says &quot;Sound recordings captured by purely mechanical means without originality of any kind also lack a sufficient amount of authorship to warrant copyright protection&quot;. I'm aware of the Monkey Selfie Copyright Dispute, and so of course one could infer something from that from the visual domain. But are there any sound recording cases where a legal decision-maker is trying to actually apply that test to some concrete facts? Putting &quot;purely mechanical means without originality of any kind&quot; into Google Scholar brings up nix.</p>

<p>We are talking about the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threshold_of_originality#Mechanically_produced_works" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Threshold of Originality</a> here. Let's look at what would constitute such a recording:</p>
<p>It needs to be made purely automatic. It needs to not care for any original choices. As a result, such a recording is utilitarian. Like security camera footage or service hotline calls.</p>
<p>The Copyright Office deems such material unregisterable.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>&quot;in order to be entitled to copyright registration, a work must be the product of human authorship. Works produced by mechanical processes or random selection without any contribution by a human author are not registrable.&quot;</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I have found a case: the defense in <a href="https://casetext.com/case/southwest-casino-hotel-corp-v-flyingman-2" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Southwest Casino Hotel Corp. v. Flyingman</a> centered around the claim that CCTV footage would not be copyrightable.</p>

copyright