Good question George,
The answer is that the "original" file will probably have one or more MIDI messages embedded within it that tell us about the author, or other things about the song.
These messages are usually one, or more, of three different types.
These three message types, amongst several others, are known as meta data.
Meta data is information that tells you about the following data but doesn't affect that data. i.e data about data.
Usually you have to open the file in List View so that you can examine things in detail track by track.
The three messages that we're looking for are called
1/. a "text" event,
2/. a "copyright" event and
3/. a "marker" event.
4/. although many people put copyright info into one or more "track name" Meta Events. This usually means they are displayed by most sequencer programs.
Here you can see the various events embedded within a file, in this case in different tracks, and using a very good freebie sequencer called Sekaiju to view them.
I've highlighted the information, but if you look to the left you will see the event type of text, copyright or marker.
Sekaiju can be found here:
openmidiproject.sourceforge.jp/Sekaiju_en.htmlOf course, not finding any of this may just mean that someone has deleted the information. So the file you have isn't necessarily the "original".
On the other hand it may mean that the program you're using doesn't display this kind of Meta Data, or that it hides it away in a "conductor" track, and that is true of many commercial packages. So it may be there but you just can't see it.
And lastly, of course, the creator may not have known how to insert this meta data within their file, although it's most likely that all commercial producers of MIDI files do know how.
There are several other Meta Data event types where information could be hidden e.g. Sequence Name, Instrument Name or even within a sequencer specific meta event.
These events won't always, necessarily appear at the beginning of the file, Glenn used to sprinkle Text Events in various tracks at different points in a file, but it's normal practise to put them at the start.
Then there are other much more complex ways of finding out, for which you need a reasonable amount more knowledge of MIDI file construction. We used that detailed knowledge to find that so many files posted to the original MIDImart web site were plagiarised with the original copyright replaced with e.g. MINVEC.
For obvious reasons I don't want to divulge that knowledge but, in fact, anybody getting to know the detail of MIDI file construction can work it out for themselves.
Any help?
JohnG.
Ok i know this is always a `bone of contention`as you know i don`t really get to involved in the techie end lol but could you explain to me how to `open` a file and prove copyright 
