Slashdot Mirror
Copyright Battle Over Nothing
An Anonymous Coward writes: "In this story reported at The Independent is "one of the more curious copyright disputes of modern times." It appears that the key question is "which part of the silence was stolen." If only this was April First. This is a lawsuit suing over the sound of nothing, no sound, silence, nada, zilch, bupkiss.
Now I can be in trouble too... "............"
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
And the people bowed and prayed
To the neon god they made.
And the sign flashed out its warning,
In the words that it was forming.
And the sign said, "The words of the prophets
are written on the subway walls
And tenement halls."
And whisper'd in the sounds of silence.
If a tree falls in the forest..... is it liable for infringement?
"A good friend will bail you out of jail. A true friend will be sitting next to you saying, 'damn....that was fun!'"
and it was the best one on the CD.
Isn't that always the way with cover songs?
I hereby copyright the sound of a tree falling in the middle of a forest when no one is around to hear it. This is in addition to my copyright on the sound of one hand clapping. These copyrights shall be persued by the fullest extent of the law.
...an avant-garde lawsuit?
Silence isn't the absence of noise...noise is simply the absence of silence. Uncork any bottle and you will likely release the trapped silence within. It's time people really started respecting other's property rights.
Ok...
...
Done? Ok suckers, that will be $1000 per person for infringing upon the silence copyright made payable to FU Attorneys At Law. Pay up or else!!
How can the absence of something be called a copyright violation? Unless you're looking at the quantum superstate of blank media (which would mean that anything that can exist on blank media would exist on it until it was observed), which would further enrage the RIAA and push them to sue people who produce blank media.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
A wonderful passage (about different kinds of silence) from this classic novel can be found here.
I'm a bloodsucking fiend! Look at my outfit!
Don't shut your mouths up! You'll be in violation of yet another stupid copyright!
In Soviet Russia, Jesus asks: "What Would You Do?"
Unless i am not reading the entire article, it doesn't say anything about a lawsuit...
its 4 paragraphs and only says "I've received a letter on behalf of John Cage's music publishers. I was in hysterics when I read their letter."
and the guy credited them anyways.....
fun fun
void main()
{
short silence[60*44100];
memset(silence, 0, sizeof(silence));
FILE * out = fopen("silence.pcm", "w");
fwrite(silence, sizeof(short), 60*44100, out);
fclose(out);
}
Music piracy at its worst, I tell ya.
As long as people are throwing out one-liners:
"You don't have the right to remain silent. Anything you don't say will be used against you in a court of law..."
What gets me is that these people can actually claim fans. If you go to a concert, do they sit quietly onstage miming shushing to the audience?
I have been pwned because my
© gvonk, 2002, all rights reserved, etc.
El Karma: excelente(principalmente la suma de moderación hecha a los comentarios de los usuarios)
"The standard of originality for copyright is low, but it exists. - Feist vs. Rural Telephone Company.
Damn, I wish I could get a letter like that so I could sell lots of copies of empty mp3's. . .
as rediculous as this may sound, couldn't someone claim prior art?
"I've been silent long before that"
Or is that something that only works with patents?
Where are the mp3 versions of the 2 tracks in question? Perhaps then we can judge who's in the wrong here more acurately.
Well, i had a post i wrote when this showed up on the front page about 20 minutes ago.. then when i hit "submit", the story disappared from the front page and my post was lost. But i'll try again.
What i wonder is why they're going after this guy, but not, say, Boards of Canada. Their "Geogaddi" album from the end of last year ended with a track called "Magic Window" that is 1:47 of silence. Or Korn, for that matter. "Follow the Leader" began with 13 tracks containing 4 seconds of silence.
Perhaps it's because of just intent-- look at it this way. Magic Window (BoC) was there to make the album more inscrutable, and to bump the running time of the album up to 66:06 (Boards of Canada has been on a kick lately of littering references to Satan and David Koresh in their albums). The Korn album, meanwhile, had the silence there because they wanted to be "edgy", because they want to be like Nine Inch Nails and Tool (the "broken" EP contained a bunch of 1-second silent tracks between tracks 6 and 97, so that the two hidden tracks would be 98 and 99 respectively; Korn's "undertow" album pulled a similar trick, but it resulted in the hidden track being at 69), and because they hate their listeners (this should be apparent if you listen to the rest of the album).
The Mike Batt track, meanwhile, is there solely for ironic value-- the same reason for the existence of 4:33. In that way, the Mike Batt track is a rip-off of the idea of 4:33 in a way that the others are not. I guess the idea is that silence can say a lot, and all those other cases were saying something different than 4:33 was. The Batt track, meanwhile, was saying the same thing.
Anyway, i'm certain i've heard of many more instances of silent songs being tossed onto albums. The CD version of Absolute Elsewhere, for existence. So even were the copyright valid, wouldn't they have no legal leg to stand on, since they've in the past failed to defend this copyright? (Is that just an urban legend? Maybe we should come up with a new word for urban legends that are born and propigated via slashdot. "Slashdot Myth"? Nah, that sounds silly.)
Maybe this case is just because he credited Cage in the liner notes? If so, he should still be safe, since that would be satire.
I don't know. I can't honestly help but wonder if the estate of John Cage isn't pulling this as some kind of massive, destructive practical joke / performance art piece. It wouldn't be that far out of character; Cage was, after all, the man who did a live performance of Vexations.
(Well, OK, or this is a silly record company thing by nonsentient biological humans who are aware of no concepts other than profit motive. But that's such a dull explanation!)
--super ugly ultraman
- My silence is original silence, not a quotation from his silence.
There you go. We're talking (hopefully not too loudly, mind you) about two completely different silences here. There was no stealing of silence involved.As stupid as this is, let's hope no-one gets any brighter any time soon. Heh - follow me here...
Let's say they apply one of thier DRM methods on that track. If my thinking is correct, overlaying any DRM data on silence means the DRM scheme is laid bare. Instant hack, and Linux is now hapilly playing music encrypted with the DRM scheme. Sound plausible?
Awww, c'mon. Somebody speak up. The silence is deafening... *rimshot*
Soko
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
The song (both versions) is one of my favorites. It's so catchy. I've had it stuck in my head whenever I didn't have another song stuck in my head... ;-)
(Imagine this post is blank. I tried to do it, but slash won't let me. It thinks it knows better than I do what I'm trying to say. No, the cat doesn't have my tongue.)
The masses are the crack whores of religion.
I could not find the Silence Pattern in my GOF book.
Table-ized A.I.
Wrong.
Silence isn't nothing, at least not on a CD. The infringing track is sixty seconds of silence, which is not sixty seconds of zeros. (Which would still be something, mind you.) In any case, the track in the suit is 5,292,000 '0111111111111111's on the CD. (60 seconds, 44100 samples per second, 2 channels, at "zero", but recall digital audio is signed so that's 2^15-1 = 32767.)
Even if one of the two decided to use 32768 instead, the prosecution could argue there was a DC bias...
Also keep in mind this piece was premiered in an open air theatre in the forest. There would likely have been much more than silence heard.
And this isn't even getting into the idea that it is impossible to actually hear silence.
Any Cage recording would have been from the analog days... all that has to be done is to demand that the representatives produce the original master recording... crank way up until the noise content which is there regardless of what Cage's intent was is plainly audible, and run a copy of the noise-free recording that's allegedly in breach of copyright.
Silence A != Silence B. Of course, there are even more sophisticated ways to differentiate the two, depending on the conditions that were used to generate the respective "silences".
End of case, and hopefully start of new case where Cage's people get countersued for damages.
One can copyright the concrete expression of an idea. Nobody can copyright an idea, and it looks to me like Cage's people are trying to claim copyright of the idea of silence in the context of a musical composition.
Tech Public Policy stuff
If he can get the first suit to stick, then watch out for the second suit he brings -- now with precedence ;-)
Letter To Iran
I think the real issue is how it is arranged. John Cage had a piano piece and had notations indicating exactly how to rest, half rest, etc. Now, if you were not at a piano, or were in fact a full piece orchestra playing something COMPLETELY different (different notations, different key, different tempo, and different length) then there is nothing being copied whatsoever.
This comment is guaranteed*
*not guaranteed
I hate to make a big tsimmes out of this, but it's spelled bupkis (or sometimes bobkes) in English.
* As is generally the case, my opinions do not reflect those of my employer.
It's time for the Trappist monks to sue Cage's publisher. (For that matter, you'll recall the final track, "The Monks' Vow of Silence" on the Chantmania CD. If Cage's publisher didn't sue the Benzedrine Monks of Santa Demonica, then clearly they have not been vigorously protecting their copyright, have they?)
The seeming definition of Speech is "meaning". Anything that can be construed as Speech must have a meaning, a thought to be conveyed. Another way of saying this is Expression. Therefore Freedom of Speech is Freedom of Expression. That's why flag-burning is Speech, it is the expression of some meaning. If one was to spout gibberish in the town square, that too would have some meaning, though possibly only "this is gibberish for its own sake".
So if we come to the conclusion that Speech is defined as some manner of expression that connotes a meaning, we can assume that pure silence is also Speech. Therefore we are only required to deduce Cage's meaning of 4'33 and compare it to Batt's intended meaning of One Minute's Silence. Since we have no other method of determining copyright infringement, as silence is indivisible (you can't musically interpret silence, only lengthen and shorten it), the meaning behind the pieces is the main question.
I have been pwned because my
I think the theory behind John Cage's 4'33" is not so much that it's a silent piece, but rather to get the audience to listen to ambient "noise" around them. The music is produced by the environment, not by the piano. You could call it conceptual art. There's a good article here.
With this in mind, I wonder what direction the legal case should take...
John Cage's piece, 4'33", was actually very clever and quite a novel idea for its time.
One of the themes of his work is to let sounds be themselves. To that end, he composed a piece which involved a pianist holding his hands over a piano keyboard for 4 minutes and 33 seconds. The music was not silence, but rather the sound of the audience slowly realising to what was going on.
As such, this piece can never really be recorded (unless you actually record an audience listening to it, and even then, it's not the same thing; once the sound is recorded, it is no longer the same kind of performance), and claiming that a recording of silence is even close to being the same thing as 4'33" is ludicrous.
Mike Batt's problem is crediting Cage on the album. Yes, he did it for a laugh, but by doing so, did he inadvertantly claim legal liability?
Personally, I think John Cage would have gotten a real kick out of the whole proceedings. It would have appealed to his sense of whimsy.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
So it looks like this was just a standard form letter that was sent out because Batt jokingly credited cage as a composer.
I henceforth copyright the entity known as 'whitespace', From now on, anybody who utilizes this so-called 'whitespace' as a breaking symbol in between words, numbers, and/or other symbols, and is of the color 'white', and has not licensed such use, will be used for $1000 per cm^3 of the previously defined 'whitespace'.
My source on this is a bit of trivia mentioned by Mr. Top 40 himself, Casey Casem on one of his shows.
Miko O'Sullivan
Has Batt heard Cage's piece? If not, he may have just independently implemented it from the spec.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
From the article: "They say they are claiming copyright on a piece of mine called 'One Minute's Silence' on the Planets' album, which I credit Batt/Cage just for a laugh. But my silence is original silence, not a quotation from his silence."
This sounds very silly, but maybe there is a valid point to be made. Mike Batt has a silent track on his album, apparently in something of an homage to avant-garde, experimentalist composer John Cage. To reinforce the connection he even co-credits Cage on the track (but presumably isn't giving out any royalties).
If he simply left a minute of silence on his album (without the credit) then I'd definitely think that there's nothing there. However, by crediting Cage (even as a joke or a tribute) he has opened himself up to charges of copyright infringement and/or misrepresentation.
Without even "listening", one would get the impression (from his liner notes) that his work either draws from Cage, or is co-authored by him. This goes beyond copyright - for instance, even if Mickey Mouse became public domain, no one using should ever be allowed to pretend to be either Disney or to be authorized by Disney (without their permission).
IANAL, but to me there are two valid reasons for IP laws. The first is to encourage dissemination of ideas by rewarding creativity. This is the one that is generally criticized, since the method of reward (monopoly etc.) is somewhat arbitrary and frequently abused. The other reason for IP protection is to prevent misrepresentation. This concept should always be upheld, even regardless of whether a copyright, patent, or trademark has expired.
I appreciate the subtle satire achieved by crediting Cage, but in this case it leaves the potential for confusion and the impression that Cage has contributed to and is getting reimbursed for the work. The lawyers might not agree, but Cage should either pay up, remove the credit only, or (my preferred choice) clearly identify the work (including the credit, which has artistic merit) as a non-derivative tribute/satire.
PS. Sorry about the pun's (unintentional, honest).
My next sig will be ready soon, but friends can beat the rush!
Cage's 4'33" (4 minutes, 33 seconds) was mostly an experiment into the nature of silence.
Cage actually spent a lot of time researching Zen teachings. His research into silence eventually led him to Harvard University and a visit to its Anechoic Chamber - a closed environment supposedly complete free of noise.
"While he literally expected to hear nothing, after leaving the chamber, Cage explained to a nearby engineer that he had heard two sounds in the chamber, one high, and one low. The engineer told Cage that the high sound was his nervous system in operation, and that the low sound was his blood circulating"
The point of 4'33" was to state that there is no such thing as silence. For more info, check out this paper by Andrew Schulze on the subject.
--
Disclaimer: The above statement probably includes half-truths, because real truth is too complicated.
...their 1998 album "Follow The Leader" featured 12 tracks of silence before the music began.
Observe.
Obviously this is going to be thrown right out. Interesting though is the "composer" of this particular "silence" credited Cage's 4'33" (see this post). Coudl that alone do it? IANAL...
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
As a former employee of Pat Obriens in the French Quarter in New Orleans I can let you in on a little known fact.
They have the phrase "Have Fun!" copyrighted. So I guess you cant say it or have fun without dire results.
If you check their web-page out, look at the very bottome and you can read it in the blurb there.
http://www.patobriens.com/havefun.html
Just thought of something, if we slashdot their box, it is almost the equivalent of what their booz has been doing to people for years.
Puto
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
How does this bode for CD's with a "secret track" on them? I'm talking about the CD's where on the last track, after the main song is finished, there is about 6 minutes of silence and then some more music or a clip of the band talking and hanging out. Do all these CD's infringe on the copyright?
"Well kids, you tried your best, and you failed. The lesson is, never try." -Homer Simpson
And it's a piece intended to be performed live, the musician plays nothing but the audience is moving in their chairs, whispering about what's going on, coughing, sneezing etc. and this is the beauty of Cage's piece. It's different everytime.
In other news, the price of Sketch Pads has increased by %.27 cents a page. Artists across the country are furious over this ridiculous price increase after a reputable modern artist copyrighted a blank canvas and demanded licensing fees for the reproduction of his work. His work, "A Polar Bear Blinking in a Blizzard", caught the art world by storm through his originality and artistic efficiency.
"Derp de derp."
It appears that the producer actually makes reference to Cage in the credits - in fact, gives him credit for the track. In that light, this would seem to be at least somewhat derivative. Still absurd, but not quite as absurd as it would seem otherwise.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
It seems like the new FreeBSD Logo is violating a copyright also.
Table-ized A.I.
Ah... but at what frequency will you be generating this zero-amplitude silence? My patent is pending on `0 * sin (2 * pi * 256)' (middle C) so watch out.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
I copyrighted the note "F" some time ago, and almost successfully sued Britney Spears for using it without my permission, except her lawyers found a loophole, claiming that she wes really singing "E#." Fucking lawyers.
c-hack.com |
How can these clowns hope to copyright silence when I've already obtained 3 patents on it?
For every post, there is an equal and opposite re-post.
John Cage himself has been silent on the issue.
Have you ever heard a more blatent admission of IP theft? Lock him up now, I say!
P.S. Please ignore this post if you didn't grow up in England in the 70s/80s...
My proposal:
Mic feces and recorded it in a studio. (Make sure the acoustics of the room are just right and EQ out any reflected sound).
Every time somebody claims that music playing on the radio sounds like shit, sue the band's asses off!
"That sounds very similar to my piece 'Fecal Matter in D Minor'! I am insensed! I'll settle for $3,000,000 out of court. Ta"
:)
My guess is that there really *is* a big difference at the barest levels. Chances are good the original 'silence' was an analog recording, which wouldn't sound the same as digital silence. The media to playback the original would have been tape/vinyl/whatever. This current silence was either recorded or just reproduced digitally, probably intended for CDs primarily. Look at a sonic meter thingy analyzing Cage's silence and the Batt silence. I'm sure there's a *big* difference.
creation science book
Damn, I wish I had my points back - excellent issue you raise! This might not seem such a big deal in the socialist UK, but it's blatantly obvious to us yanks. :)
creation science book
What about my "Best of Marcel Marceau" LP, copyright 1955?
Hey, all you canucks out there - no need to pay blank media taxes on cd-rs... they're not blank. they're simply recordings of a cover of 4'33" :-)
Send lawyers, guns, and money!
I have no idea why I even bother...
Have you perchance noticed the line:
memset(silence, 0, sizeof(silence));
Hmm... I wonder what it does. Set's the the memory array, pointed to by silence to zero? Up until the size of silence?
Why do people post replies before they read the original posts?
NASA and their team of astronauts are being sued for contributary copyright infringement; In space, no one can hear you scream.
Now what am I supposed to do during the marketing presentation when I am usually SSS (Skeptically Sitting Silently).....
The Louisiana band Better Than Ezra has a track at the end of their album "Deluxe" that includes a long period of silence. The track starts with the song "Coyote", which is followed by a very long silence, a minute or two, then there is what can only be described as a nonsense song which has the refrain "Der pork und beans mit saurkrauten". So why didn't John Cage's minions get upset over that - merely because it's not listed in the credits as a separate song?
The silence always fools me into thinking that the music is over - which is probably what it's meant to do, being at the end of the CD. It's especially confusing when I'm listening to a bunch of randomized mp3s; I hit that silence and "What, my playlist is over already?" If I'm coding or something, I just tolerate the silence, thinking I'll start some new tracks at the next compile. Then the "hidden" song starts, and I realize I've been fooled again.
The Cage estate should sue BTE and make them recall all those nasty hurtful fooling CDs. More lawyers! Litigation solves everything!
BTW, Tom Petty put a little CD-only track into the middle of his "Full Moon Fever" CD many years ago. It was a spoken bit, with the studio musicians in the background making barnyard noises, and Tom says "Hello CD listeners! We've come to the point in this album where those listening on record or cassette will have to stand up, or sit down and turn over the record or tape. In fairness to those listeners, we'll now take a few seconds before we begin side2... Thank you. Here's side2..."
Am I offtopic yet?
--Jim
I'm not sure when Cage's peice came out.
It appears to have been standard practice or common practice with LP's in the sixties, to distribute them with a blank second side. The LP Life with the Lions was compared unfavourably with this. It is an avant guarde LP.
I am not a lawyer, but I think there is established prior art on silence, and the only new peice that one could suggest is that if the silence is "intended for" some rememberence or some other significance. That is, the a given significance of the silence might be copyrightable, not the silence itslef.
OS/2 - because choice is a terrible thing to waste.
Oh wait this is Slashdot, no one will get that.
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
Former US President Richard Nixon can claim prior art on this. He recorded 18 and a half minutes of silence back in the 70s.
Not "bupkis." Means "beans."
Make me aerodynamic in the evening air
I'd go on a rant about how inaccurate Slashdot stories usually are (for examples in just the last two days, see the story about Microsoft changing its EULA when it didn't, the report that Mandrake was the first distro to say thay'd support the Hammer, and the dotGNU "we think the dates are wrong, but we're giving them to you anyway" piece), but I won't. In the interest of not being moderated down for being off-topic, I'm wondering about how this particular story got hosed in the translation.
The actual story only mentions a letter sent from Cage's publishers... there is no lawsuit, contrary to the header on the story. Who knows? For all we can tell from the actual story, the letter may have been just as much of a joke as the credit Batt gave Cage on his album.
So why was it reported as being a lawsuit? Is it just the usual Slashdot sloppiness in following a link before they post it, or are people so lawsuit-happy that we assume that where there's a letter, there's a court battle?
This refers to advance copies made available for reviewers. Normal retail copies were always double-sided. One of the reviews of the LP refer to these blank sides.
I'm not sure when Cage's peice came out.
The peice came out in 1952. None of this 1960's practice, or Lennon's 1969 peice were challenged, even though this has been pointed out on a number of occasions.
On the other hand, Lennon's 1969 song "Come Together" was challenged for copyright infringement. Lennon put Ya-Ya on the LP Walls and Bridges as part of the settlement.
OS/2 - because choice is a terrible thing to waste.
There are at least two examples of prior art in this case. In the 1960's... In the 1970's...
Cage's 4'33" was first performed in 1952. But that doesn't matter anyway, because "prior art" doesn't apply to copyright claims. If I own the copyright on something, can I choose to sue one person who violates it while ignoring or even condoning another. Copyright is inviolable until such time as it expires.
By the way, you obviously have no idea what 4'33" is all about. Crack a book sometime before dashing off on the subject.
you have the right to remain silent, just not the copyright to remain silent. Anything you don't say may be used in a DMCA case against you.
Double Hmmm... "We have ways of making you talk". It may be decision time: testify against yourself, or face the rats nest that is a copyright/DMCA case against you. Either way you're screwed.
:)
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
Since Cage's name was mentioned in a context that usually indicates authorship credit, but without permission, Cage's estate is presumably saying that Batt is trading unfairly off Cage's name by implying (misrepresenting) that the track in question has something to with Cage.
If Batt had simply acknowledged Cage in the liner notes somewhere, the same issue would not have arisen, since there would be no misrepresentation.
Batt is simply trying to make the issue go away by making fun of the silence aspect, but Cage's estate does in fact have a point, legally speaking, which has nothing to do with a copyright on silence.
Taking a copyright on silence seriously, or taking silence as art seriously. Either one is a joke. I wish people could just have a nice laugh and move on, without adding crap like this to an already abused court system. I'm picking my nose right now. I hereby copyright it. If you also are picking your nose right now, I order you to cease and desist!
The sound of one hand clapping is being smacked in the face.
You don't get it all. The problem is this -
"which I credit Batt/Cage just for a laugh"
The estate of John Cage is upset that the composition in question is credited to John Cage.
There is an assertion in the notes that:
1. John Cage is the author.
2. John Cage or his estate approved of this "performance"
3. John Cage or his estate approved of shortening 4'33" down to just a bit more than a fifth its original length ( or playing it five times as fast I guess )
Imagine for a moment how much lawyer exhaust you would land in if you claimed to have a previously unrecorded collaboration between yourself and John Lennon.
From the sounds of this article I take it that this is all taking place in the UK. Mike Batt is lucky he isn't getting sued for libel and maybe fraud.
I don't think the silence itself has anything to do with this case.
And I'll bet they paid a royalty, and that it was sixty seconds long.
Also, I'll bet that John Cage had no problems with John Lennon's One Minute Of Silence, because Lennon didn't attribute his silence to Cage. ( I think they were on friendly terms personally as well, or at least Yoko Ono most certainly was. She and La Monte Young )
In "Homage to John Cage", Nam June Paik poured shampoo on Cage's head and cut off his tie.
But Nam June Paik didn't claim Cage wrote it.
It's the "claiming Cage wrote it" part that is the basis of the lawsuit.
If someone claimed I had done or written something that I had not, I would be pissed as well.
should be the Bloodhound Gang, for thier track "The Ten Greatest Things about New Jersey", which is ten seconds of silence.
Brant
Argle. Bargle.
That means that when we aren't making noise we're violating the DMCA !
La la la la la la shok shok la la
...of that guy who put together a compilation of "1-minute silences". He just got the audio recordings of all the respective happenings (Lady Di memorial, whatever) and cut out the 1-minute silence period which by definition was not quite silent - you would hear distand police sirens, people couging, whatever.
Back when I read about it, I thought that it was way too ridiculoud to be topped. Well, this story got me.
+++ath0
f = open("silence.pcm","w")
f.write("\x00\x00" * (60 * 44100))
f.close()
-- What do you need?
-- Gnus. Lots of Gnus.
Totally silence is totally impossible. Background static (if detected) is non-reproducable.
Unless someone is deaf, of course, but will the RIAA sue deaf people? Hmm...
Besides, I'm sure your deity/belief of choice will cite Prior Art.
If I could patent 'white noise' by stating total random sound... then that would include all music ever made.
If someone wanted to copyright white noice (or total *cough* silence), then they would still be infringing on all music ever made, or all music ever made when the volume is set to zero.
In my opinion, this cannot be done.
But whadda I know anyway...
:)
No reason to throw insults around. Maybe it's part of the joke? Ya know: silence, void, ...
Say no to software patents.
And the reason John Cage's piece is 4'33" is because that is 273 seconds, and absolute zero is -273C (near as makes no odds). It all makes sense now...
Oh yeah, didn't the Bloudhound Gang do a track called "The Ten Best Things About New Jersey" which was 10 seconds of silence?
Baz
You for got the cliping from 0 volts to -1 volts at the begining and the -1 to 0 at the end.
You need to add a little compensation.
short silence[60*44100+1];
fwrite(silence, sizeof(short), 60*44100+1, out);
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Batt said last night: "I've received a letter on behalf of John Cage's music publishers. I was in hysterics when I read their letter.
I've heard enough of the crap that John Cage sold the marks to know that he was no more a musician than Jackson Pollock was an artist.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
This sounds to me like the good old dry British sense of humor at work, not some US style "you farted in my airspace" whacky law suit.
"For the words of the profits
are written on the studio walls,
and concert halls,
echo with the sounds of salesmen."
- from "The Spirit of Radio" by Rush, 1980
(this is not a
dd bs=44100 count=120 /dev/dsp
-- What do you need?
-- Gnus. Lots of Gnus.
Coderz 4 Life
Looks like we have to re-think that "You have the right to remain silent" thing...
Secondly, (quoted from azstarnet)
One would imagine that Blatt's silence would be a digital silence - no noise, a silent file he generated and slapped on a CD. Cage's silence (not that it is silence as outlined above), since it is much older, would probably have at least white noise in it on a recording. Clearly since Cage did not believe that silence could exist neither he nor his estate could claim ownership of silence.
F4+80y +1++135
FatBoy Titties - (aren't I l33+
. . . and then sue Hammermill. (Suggestion gleaned from Cyberia).
Let me see if I understand correctly. Not only is nothing now something, but someone owns it, and will sue if you use it. I hope this lawsuit will point out to legislators and courts worldwide how copyrights, patents, and other "intellectual property" laws no longer stimulate innovation or creativity, but have become nothing but a money grab scam. The following sentance used to be a double-negative, but is now perfect english. Don't buy nothing from the recording industry.
The Uncoveror: It's the real news.
Actually, Cage's ideas about 4'33'' changed several times during his life. Of particular interest here is that, when he first thought of the idea of a silent piece in 1948, his intent was to sell it to Muzak (so he could get some peace & quiet in elevators, I suppose). So the notion of collecting royalties on it now just brings the piece back to its beginning ...
Some self-described "composer" who doesn't even write real music you can hum along with is suing the man who wrote "THE WOMBLING SONG".
--
E_NOSIG
Does this mean that all music that contains parts of John Cage's 4'33 is covered by DRM? What are they gonna replace it with? The sound of one hand clapping? Oh great, you mean we get stuck with elevator music ALL THE TIME? ;-)
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"I wasn't going to enter a response to this article, but I was afraid of receiving a cease and desist order if I remained silent.
Ah ha! That's why I use "This page accidentally left blank"
It really messes with customers.
Whoever stated that signature sizes should be limited to one hundred and twenty characters can just go ahead and kiss my
Track 3 on the Mind Games album. 3 seconds long, 3 seconds of silence. The album was released November 1973.
20kHz is the average upper limit of human hearing. Some of us are able to hear higher frequencies, allowing us to do stupid party tricks like complaining about TVs that are left on with no video signal feeding them. But I digress.
One day in a physics lab during my freshman year of college, we were doing audio interference experiments and, after finishing early, I started playing with the audio oscillator I had been assigned. According to this test (which was, admittedly, likely to be somewhat less than 100% accurate) I was capable of hearing sounds up to about 23.5kHz and could sense vibrations up to around 25kHz, although these were perceived as something more like a pressure on my head rather than as sound.
So I have no difficulty in believing that the earlier poster was at one point able to hear up to 25kHz.
open("silence.pcm", "w").write("\x00\x00\x00\x00" * (60 * 44100))
The file is closed after writing since the handle's reference count hits 0 (or something like that).
Even the lyrics are the same! Compare: The Planets' lyrics and John Cage's lyrics.
I really hate signatures, but go to my website.
IsupposesomeasswillsettheDCMAonmeunlessIrespectyou rcopyright.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
Nope, because each of those tracks were under 8 bars, or whatever the time limit is
If the alleged infringer doesn't have money for a legal defence, then the plaintiff sets the time limit. For instance, George F. Handel's publisher was able to win a court case over four notes.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Tell the judge if he seriously wasn't going to throw it out of court for being asinine, the song was actually covered under fair use... It was a parody!!!
I had a sucky sig.
Think of all the prior art for silence sitting on the shelves of your local music store in the form of blank audio casettes!
Clear Channel has picked up both tunes and have put them on Maximum Rotation! Expect to hear these soon on your local affilliate!
I seem to recall a similar piece entitled "The Wit and Wisdom of Ronald Regan"
It seems that this joke dates at least back to the 1980's
Prior art?
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
"The estate of John Cage is upset"
Utterly classic. That very nicely sums up the nature of the problem with copyrights. Estate in this context meaning (to me anyway) "people who had nothing to do with the original works yet want to profit from them, in perpetuity". Right and one of my ancestors was related to the first cave-dweller who banged a rock rythmically. Every fscking person in the entire music industry OWES ME!
LEXX
"Gold still represents the ultimate form of payment in the world." - Alan Greenspan, 1999
no, it's not "profit from them, in perpetuity"
They just don't want to be associated with it.
Say for instance that someone circulated a letter that misrepresented you and alleged that you were the author. This is often referred to as forgery.
When John Cage said "I have nothing to say, and I'm here to say it" that didn't keep others from saying nothing, it's just not a good idea for them to say that they are John Cage
"I have nothing to say, and I'm here to say it"
should have been
"I Have Nothing to Say and I Am Saying It"
the first quote is from something else entirely.
While we can all applaud John Cage for this attempt to introduce even more surrealism to the copyright debate, I might also mention that back in the 80's AT&T made, in all seriousness, a copyright claim on blank lines.
/bin/true program, which along with /bin/false is part of every unix system library. It's a bit of trivia, but these commands are needed for some scripting applications. The "true" command is a command that merely exits with a successful (zero) status. Its most common use was for a "while true do ..." infinite loop.
...
This was in the
The script actually contained no code, since its behavior is the default action of a shell script if there is no code. However, it did contain two significant pieces of text.
It contained a blank line, and an AT&T copyright notice.
I had a bit of fun at the time posting the program in its entirety to several newsgroups, pointing out that I was openly and knowingly publishing the full source code for an AT&T copyrighted program, and I challenged their lawyers to sue me for infringment.
I never heard from them. This is a bit strange, since, although they might not have been following any of the tech newsgroups, they almost certainly would have received copies of my message from a lot of readers.
We had several good discussions of whether we should go through all our files and delete all the blank lines to comply with the AT&T copyright.
It wasn't clear whether AT&T was claiming ownership of only the blank lines in shell scripts, all programs, all files, or all documents (on disk or paper). If I'd ever heard from any AT&T lawyers, I would have asked them.
Maybe we can actually get such things resolved now. I'll predict that the Cage folks will be happy to discuss the issue with us
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Reminds me of the Melvins' track off "Prick" entitled "Pure Digital Silence." Basically, it's just a guy saying in a gravelly voice, "And now, pure digital silence," followed by a minute or so of silence.
Or their cover of John Cage's 4'33" which they retitled "Shit Sandwich (and you just took a bite)" because they also released it on a limited pressing of vinyl. They've been performing this "song" at shows recently... it's sort of a different reaction from the crowd of a rock show than it is at a classical concert!
someone once told me that they would go into honky-tonk bars, load the jukebox up with quarters and play 4'33" over and over and over again.
apparently this would result in a rise in temperature.
Liberty uber alles.
-273C, not 273C. 273C would be a medium hot oven.
What if the silence was longer? IIRC Covenant's Unites Sate of Mind has a track called you can make your own musik that is about 4 minutes of silence. Is that infringing?
*Not a Sermon, Just a Thought
*/