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DRM for 1'3" of Silence
jc42 writes "In the latest entry in the battle over Digital Rights Management, a fellow has blatantly ripped off a "tune" from the iTunes Store. "Tune" is 1 minute 3 seconds of silence. To compound his crime, he has posted the tune on his web site for anyone to download. I downloaded it to iTunes, and it played just fine (but now I suppose I'm a criminal, too). I wonder what John Cage and Mike Batt would have to say about this? Will lawyers for Apple or Ciccone Youth send a C&D letter? If I were to make my own MP3 silent tune of exactly the same length and put it online, would I be infringing their copyright?"
At least that's one song who's lyrics won't offend the FCC.
Or do you think they mught just be committing quiet obscenities? Better ban it anyway just in case.
Beep beep.
Actually, if it was John Cage, you would hear the performer turning the page.
Sorry, but no. As I seem to recall, there is a minimum number of notes required in order to copyright something. As a corallary, you could not write a "book" with the contents being the word "the", and then sue everyone for breach of copyright. In other words, raw, unadulturated silence cannot be copyrighted; it needs content.
You people waste so much time and thought finding new ways to split hairs. Get back to work.
That song has still got to be better than most of the music on iTunes.
If I were to make my own MP3 silent tune of exactly the same length and put it online, would I be infringing their copyright?
YES! If you market a "8 Minute Abs" program, you'll be in trouble, but "7 Minute Abs" is probably okay, and BETTER!
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
Damn!
You have the right to remain silent.
I can see why the don't want it there are a lot of reasons why people would want to protect the "Sound of Silence"
People who would:
Simon
Garfunkel
Neon God
Also Society of Friends
I guess the RIAA has Slashdotted their site to protect their copyrighted silence.
Well... you could always claim that your MP3 was a collection of 5 seconds snippets of the "tune", and plead Fair Use...
mmm... yeah... You see, we're putting the cover sheets on all TPS reports now before they go out...
Is it a really obscure remix of "Enjoy The Silence"?
But only got the message,
"Nothing to hear here. Move along."
__ Someday, but not this morning, I'll finally learn to use the preview button.
At least in some countries there is a right to make a parody.
I wanted to find an mp3 of 4'33'' the other day. I searched all the filesharing networks... there wasn't one *anywhere*!
Friends don't let friends misuse the subjunctive.
The above is copright 2005 wolrahnaes
I used to get high on life, but I developed a tolerance. Now I need something stronger.
Article is already slashdotted, here's the google cache:
I'm gonna preface this by saying that I love Apple and their products and I hate the RIAA and their shortsightedness. My only complaint with Apple is the restrictive DRM built into iTunes Music Store songs (also, those new G5s could be a little cheaper).
In protest, I've committed a real crime and documented the entire process. But it shouldn't be that way and that's why I've done it. Come and get me, Apple! Come and get me, RIAA!
It all started with a free song code from the Pepsi iTunes promotion. I tilted several Pepsi bottles at the local Ralphs (just look for random letters under the cap), found me a winner and scored a free song.
You may not know this, but there are several tracks that you can buy from that iTunes Music Store that consist of nothing more than total silence.
Here's one from Ciccone Youth (a Sonic Youth side project):
So I bought it.
Then, I wanted to play this song on another device other than my iPod (I own a Creative MuVo TX MP3 Player). No go. The Digital Rights Management (DRM) makes it impossible to transfer the song to my other MP3 player unless I go through some ridiculous steps which involve burning the purchased song to a CD and then ripping it. This causes a noticeable loss of sound quality due to the song being recompressed. Totally unacceptable. I want pure silence.
So I stripped the DRM using JHymn, a cross-platform application that unlocks your DRM'ed songs and keeps the original's sound quality. This is absolutely, positively illegal according to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).
One law broken, one to go.
One file is legal, the other one is definitely not. Can you spot the one that'll get me in trouble? I'll give you a hint: it's the one without the little lock over its icon.
There's just one law left to break. I'm offering this very file for download here on my website. So go ahead, download it (1.1 MB) and break the law with me. Right click, save as, and crank it up on your favorite portable electronic music player.
If this little stunt gets me in trouble, you'll be the first to know.
You can help stop the RIAA and their nonsense at Downhill Battle.
Find out more about protecting your digital rights online at the Electronic Frontier Foundation's website.
Silence is golden. Get involved.
Track your TV Shows with your iPhone - FREE
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
Lack of bandwidth appears to have stopped him already. Here's Google's cache:
Google Cache
Is there something more to this than an uninteresting thought experiment in regard to IP and DRM?
I'm a big tall mofo.
If I copyright the sound of my fart, will anyone else's recording of a fart be infringement or parody?.
- Just my $0.02, take with a grain of salt, your mileage may vary.
That is the sound of one hand clapping.
Umm no, tell me: What exactly are you copying?
more about that here
Dashboard Widgets
Go figure, we silenced a clip of silence.
...it's digitally encoded silence!
crazy dynamite monkey
I'm about to break the exercise video market wide open.
Six.
Minute.
Abs!
FYI - Ciccone Youth is actually Sonic Youth doing a strange album of Madonna covers.
"Can you hear me now?"
"When will this FP stuff stop?" "After the great growing..." "The great growing?" "Yea, when people grow up."
it doesn't matter if they vocalize the words, we all know they are THINKING them.
sum.zero
"The Sound of Silence" was recorded back in '65. Just shows you how little originality is left in the American music scene today ...
Let me be the first to say, "Thank you Mirrordot!" and "Thank you Google Cache!"
I don't keep a lid on my coffee so when I walk around I look busy -me
How can you do such a terrible thing?
After all DRM is meant to protect the poor artists from pirates who steal their work.
So how can an action that makes DRM look absurd be justified?
What kind of legal precedent would this create if it ever came to court? On one hand he has probably violated the DMCA by circumventing the copy-protection on the song. On the other hand, all he has is a song that is devoid of any content. (Could you compare it to a thief who broke into a house only to find it empty - would it not be a crime, if he knew beforehand that the house was empty?)
Plenty of questions to be debated here..
"When the only tool you own is a hammer, every problem begins to resemble a nail." - Abraham Maslow (1908-1970)
The only problem with this is that Microsoft has just been issued a patent for a method of producing no sound via a mp3 data stream.
As there is nothing whatsoever creative about a minute or so of silence, I don't see there as being any copyright to infringe upon.
Backup not found: (A)bort (R)etry (P)anic
Oh wait...
I would rather be killed by a terrorist than enslaved by my government.
This has been done.
I can't wait to hear the mashup with Paul Simon's "The Sound of Silence"
So their case is prior art or something similar? It's probably true that the fellow *is* copying... but if you record it yourself, would it not be similar to recording your own garage band version of "Hey, Jude".
seriously, though... can i breathe your patented air?
This probably means that the connection information in your wp-config.php file is incorrect. Double check it and try again.
* Are you sure you have the correct user/password?
* Are you sure that you have typed the correct hostname?
* Are you sure that the database server is running?
* Did you site get posted to Slashdot?
No.
On the other hand, what if it had some very low noise? Perhaps something recorded a few hundred yards from a beach? Something subtle and minimalist? Does it become patentable then?
Anything with nearly zero information content (via compression) shouldn't be patentable, but this is such a nerdy testing-the-limits-of-the-system thing to do that I can't help but watch.
White noise has content. So, sure, go ahead and copyright -your- white noise. But, so long as someone else didn't mimic yours (which wouldn't be too hard -- or even desired, what with white noise being essentially random), they'd be fine. In other words, as Hunter S. Thompson would say, "Just put your TV between channels, pump up the volume, and listen to the wonderful white noise." And not sweat the copyright.
Although copying anything that isn't recognizable by others isn't copyright violation - I belive something like x number of notes have to be similar or identical to be an infringement, I think it is funny that we may here see more of a DCMA-type issue, where he copies something he shouldn't have.
You can dance...
The Kai's Semi-Updated Website Thingy
One foot, three inches of silence?
If I were to make my own MP3 silent tune of exactly the same length and put it online, would I be infringing their copyright?
No. First of all, no one has a copyright on any length of pure silence. You can copyright SOUND RECORDINGS. Pure silence is the absence of sound, and is therefore not copyrightable.
However, you could record yourself sitting in front of a piano (ala Cage) and the various ambient sounds recorded would technically be a unique work, and as the original author you would own the copyright on that SOUND RECORDING.
This guy is violating the DRM agreements that Apple set forth, so Apple could pursue him.
As explained above, the pure silence is not copyrightable, so the RIAA has no beef.
If the guy forgot to remove the album artwork from the file, then he is infringing the copyright of whoever owns the album artwork copyright, and they could sue him.
What is he really trying to prove? The point is lost on me due to his ineptitude.
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
Well, it may not be copyright infringement, but if he cracked the DRM to access the silence, it is indeed a crime under the DCMA. Which is one of the big problems with the DCMA. Even if you have a legal right to the material that is copy protected, you cannot crack the copy protection without committing a crime.
Don't forget that Friday is Hawaiian shirt day.
Now I can finally get some peace and quiet.
this would fall under fair use - silence cannot be copyrighted.
From the US Copyright Office Website:
"The distinction between "fair use" and infringement may be unclear and not easily defined. There is no specific number of words, lines, or notes that may safely be taken without permission."
http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html
Kiteboarding Gear Mention slashdot and get 10% off!
One foot three inches of music?
TODO: Insert witty sig
it is dumb to sell "songs" that are actually nothing more than silence. i think that is pretty ridiculous.
sum.zero
You can put drm on anything, even silence or a book consisting of the word the.
Don't you think that this evil action could teach us something about just how absurd drm is?
People have been having a "moment of silence" long before the advent of recorded material. That being the case, any period of silence would just be a modern arrangement of a traditional..um, song?
What does this button do...
1'3" of silence sounds very impressive when played backwards - especially the backwards lyrics. :)
I listened to the song, but it really didn't convey any meaning to me.... all in all unoriginal .5/5
I'm sure pootie has his silent song copyrighted!
from the article (http://ecoustics-cnet.com.com/Crank+it+iTunes+sel ls+sounds+of+silence--for+real/2100-1041_3-5154202 .html)
Most famously, composer John Cage composed "4'33""--a 1952 piece that features just over four and a half minutes without sound. The BBC broadcast a live performance of the piece earlier this year--featuring the BBC Symphony Orchestra, no less.
Cage's estate even managed to win a copyright fight in 2002, getting Mike Batt to pay a six-figure settlement because a Batt recording included a silent track that he credited to Cage.
Copyright should not apply to sound. Think about it! What the hell is a song anyway? Words, lyrics, musical notation? Sure copyright can apply to all these things. But the act of someone singing the song itself? Silence?!? Who the hell decided that should be the subject of copyright?!
If Mettalica sing a song, at a concert, and I'm at the concert, or even outside it!, and I record the song on my handy gizmo, am I libel for copyright theft? What the hell did I steal? The changes in pressure in the air? Why the hell is an acoustic waveform the subject of copyright?! The written word yes. The spoken word?
OK Mettalica walk down the street and out loud say XYZ. I take down and print what they have said XYZ in as many ways as I like. I can record them doing so and show it to as many as I like, tabloids do this all he time. Am I liable? Mettalica walk down the street and out loud sing, or hum, ABC(which is one of their songs). I record them doing so and broadcast it? Am I Liable? Yes?! Why! Why their singing is copyrighted of course! Ridiculous.
Super rich rockstars are a recent phenomenon, brough about by the application of copyright to sound itself. This is ridiculous as the "silence" track shows. A soundform is NOT the same as the written word or musical notation. What about all the takes that artists didn't use? They are completely different soundforms? What if I hear the sound through a wall. Again completely different soundform results. Does an artist have rights to every possible soundform resulting from the transformation of their music?
Copyright cannot be applied to nondefinite, unwritten material. Soundwaves should not be copyrightable.
May the Maths Be with you!
So, do I have to pay royalties for not saying anything for a minute and 3 seconds in front of a large group of people?
I'm offering this very file for download here on my website. So go ahead, download it (1.1 MB) and break the law with me.
Letter to plasticbugs.com from the RIAA:
Dear PlasticBugs,
It has come to our attention that you are hosting copyrighted material on your website. In the past we have dispatched goons. Unfortunately this takes up to a week.
In order to more effectively destroy your ability to distribute copyrighted material, we have decided to destroy your server by providing a link to its content to a very popular website's front page.
We wish your server well in its next life.
Sincerely,
JC42
__ Someday, but not this morning, I'll finally learn to use the preview button.
It would be up to a court to decide if your own recorded silence was an original work or a version of their work.
Depending on the outcome of that, you may have to pay them a licence fee per public performance.
I read 1'3" at "1 foot, 3 inches" and, combining that with the Python foot icon, thought it was an article about the little-known Foot of Silence.
if he does attract the attention of the RIAA, it won't be the first time something like this has happened:
3 /u k.silence/
2 13 3426.stm
http://archives.cnn.com/2002/SHOWBIZ/Music/09/2
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/music/
amazing...
Cage's estate won that case - or rather, recieved a large settlement out of it.
This is a bit of a commentary on the ordeal.
/dev/psychic: No medium found
Eventually he was forced to settle for "a large sum".
It does raise the question, though, why SCO can be asked to identify which lines of code IBM infringed, while Cage's estate didn't have to identify which moments of silence had been copied.
In a related scandal, it was discovered that Ashley Simpson was not performing her three-minute silence live during a recent concert, but was in fact playing a pre-recorded three-minute silence.
Behold the riant ape! Beware, his crooked thumbs!
The Digital Rights Management (DRM) makes it impossible to transfer the song [...] unless I go through some ridiculous steps which involve burning the purchased song to a CD and then ripping it. This causes a noticeable loss of sound quality due to the song being recompressed. Totally unacceptable. I want pure silence.
I gotta admit, I laughed out loud at this line. "A noticeable loss of sound quality" of silence? I agree, that's totally unacceptable.
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
i was clearly joking...
sum.zero
Maybe Verizon will install it as the default ringer so that we don't have to the non-stop onslaught of cell phones "singing" in public.
:)
Well... It COULD work.
--
Select * from users where clue > 0;
0 rows selected.
If you play if backwards and turn up the volume you'll hear, "Developers, developers, developers, developers!"
"I'm not, like, that smart. I, like, forget stuff all the time." -- Paris Hilton
...
...
I would have said less but the darn editor wants more characters per line and an actual subject! Just try ... as a subject!
I want to play it on a cell-phone, charged by air!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Over the years I've recorded several minutes of silence. I guess I can finally start collecting copyright fees. Yipee!
Someday a Slashdot ID of 177180 will mean something.
Let me get this straight. Someone makes a "song" that's 1m 3s of silence. Some other guy makes an audio file that is 1m 3s of silence. He's daring someone to sue him, and everyone here is already screaming about it? No one's done anything! Apple hasn't sued. The artist hasn't sued. The RIAA hasn't sued. What's the big deal?
from http://www.copyright.gov/
What Is a Sound Recording?
The copyright code of the United States (title 17 of the U.S. Code) provides for copyright protection in sound recordings. Sound recordings are defined in the law as "works that result from the fixation of a series of musical, spoken, or other sounds, but not including the sounds accompanying a motion picture or other audiovisual work." Common examples include recordings of music, drama, or lectures
therefore no sound, no copyright...
sounds good to me... (no pun intended)
but this post on the otherhand... blatently stolen from their website hmm...
The Answer
man 1.1 MB for just silence you would think nothing would compress down to almost nothing.
Realy take a look, whats hard to compress, variance.
The song is the same the entire track. so realy that could be compress quite nicely. no need stereo is silence after all. no need for a bit rate, its silence.
Frankly I am a bit disapointed in the compression.
"And now we bow our heads for a moment of silence. Use of this copyrighted moment of silence has been granted by the respective copyright holders and a generous grant from the Chubb Group." :/
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
"If I were to make my own MP3 silent tune of exactly the same length and put it online, would I be infringing their copyright?"
===
Nawww.. Just add 3 more seconds of silence and call it the HOUSE VERSION...
I think there are few issues here, the main one that DRM was cracked and put on the web, doesnt matter what the song was, that was illegal in the USA. I couldnt get on the website, but if its the same file with DRM disabled, thats a problem.
Converting to a non-copyprotected format is already allowed, since they let you burn iTunes to CD. And since they already allow you to convert to one format, you could argue that point that you are just converting to another for personal use.
And the tune itself is nothing but silence, which seems flawed, as there is only 1 silence by nature itself, doesnt seem logically to be copyrightable.
Myself, I stopped using iTunes, as it doesnt carry the music I want, a few only radio stations do, so I use stream rippers, which is the same as saving off a radio. Not illegal yet, but wouldnt stop lawsuits, they can use for anything.
can we have a torrent of that file?
... so you're all ripping them off. Well, actually, Michael Jackson bought the rights to all their stuff, so you're ripping him off. But really, in the end, who gives a damn?
The heat from below can burn your eyes out
that any ashlee simpson song consisting of silence would be a vast improvement over those with noise.
sum.zero
What does it sound like?
(2) copyright said "work"
(3) Charge minimal license to use said work
(4) Vigorously sue any medium who uses your "work"
(5) Profit! (a lot!)
There should probably be a step (3a) to hire Darl McBride and Boies et al to handle step (4)...
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
this is a bit of a tangent, but does anyone notice when you go to AMC theatres that they've trademarked "Silence is Golden"?
This song has already been done by Chris Rock! Anyone seen the movie Pootie Tang? He has a silent song in there!
The gentleman from Ciccone Youth was Mike Watt. (not Batt as the op seems to say).
Is there heaven? Is there Hell? Is that a Tuna Melt I smell?-Primus
you are mixing the singular and the plural there... ;)
sum.zero
That moment of silence gives us time to think about how fucked we all are under the current regime. surely this will be banned because it encourges free thought.
The government which is strong enough to protect you from everything is strong enough to take everything from you.
I have a copyright on silence.... ...which is also patent pending.
I'll send out that letter in a few movements.
As evidenced by Mike Batt being sued by the John Cage Trust, people have been sued for copying silence.
Apparently, his minute of silence "infringed" on the late John Cage's 4'33 of silence.
No joke. No legal precedence was set, as the matter was settled out of court. (I wonder how much the trust got out of suing someone for copying silence.)
My god man,
can't you hear it?!
The voice of Satan giving orders directly to RIAA !
Seriously though, I have heard 'lower case' music that sounds like - oh, almost nothing...
but when put through a few of the Microsoft Media Player Visualizations - it paints words or pictures.
This version is an old-school hip-hop track, consisting solely of short, reordered samples from the original, with the addition of turntable scratching with the mixer volume turned all the way down.
account suspended Your account has been suspended. We have sent you an email explaining why. This email should also contain information on how you can unsuspend your account.
The problem with worrying about this is whatever conclusions are made depend on the song in question being silent; such as, "Well, if the song is silent, then DRM doesn't apply."
This is like working with sets in math and debating over what happens if the set is empty. In nearly all theorems involving sets, the set is assumed to be non-empty. Whatever may come of it being empty is likely to be meaningless.
But on the other hand, I'm kind of getting sick of cover versions...
The proposal you set (ripping off 1' 3") is flawed from the start. There is no point in recording it, because it is NOT SILENCE. John Cage simply requested no musical instrument to be played, except by accident. He did not specify "silence". So, one listens. For 1'3" of time, one listens. And since silence is never absolute (at the very minimum, you'd hear your own heart and muscles), you always listen to something. Cage's proposal was a way of proposing that we all remember to listen to everyday sounds, to environment sounds, not as noise but as content. It is an idea readily used nowadays, whenever a musician includes both outright noise or pre-recorded effects amidst more tradicional musical content. Try it now: for 1'3" listen to as much things as you can, open up and try to discover as many facets to sound as there are. That's Cage's work, not listening to a recording of that duration and ignoring all the sounds that surround you - that's a perversion of his ideia.
Pootie tang did it AGAIN!!!
Looks like they caught that nasty criminal
account suspended
Your account has been suspended. We have sent you an email explaining why. This email should also contain information on how you can unsuspend your account.
I always thought that a copyright has to be an original work
as a result, the so called 'tune' of silence would not qualify as being original.
The account on plastic bugs has now been suspended...
By any other name would smell just as much!
No way I'm I downloading it from iTunes. I'm going to wait till they release it here or here. Save 80c on my silence.
Waking Up - There must be a better way to start the day.
2) Wait for a 30-second commercial to use that sound effect. If the commercial plays the bell sound 23 seconds into the spot, well then, obviously they were using your song (the one with the bell at 23 seconds) as background music!
3) Sue.
Is it stupid? Yes. Is it illegal, most certainly.
http://jayceecorder.blogspot.com
Some of the idiots at this guy's hosting company must really be on the ball ;).
Game... blouses.
It now says that the account is suspended. Suspended because of bandwith usage, or because of the illegal activity? I wonder if you declare that you are engaging in illegal activity, they just assume that you are and shut you down.
v4sw6PU$hw6ln6pr4F$ck 4/6$ma3+6u7LNS$w2m4l7U$i2e4+7en6a2X h
And I thought there were more than six of them? Hmmmm.
:)
I thought the point of working out was to bulk them out?
Or am I missing something
cLive; -)
-- Trinity in high heels carrying a whip: The donimatrix - there is no spoonerism
but if he cracked the DRM to access the silence, it is indeed a crime under the DCMA
Not so. The DMCA forbids circumventing technological measures that control access to copyrighted works. In this case, since silence does not qualify for copyright, you'd be circumventing technological measures that control access to uncopyrighted works, which would not fall under the DMCA.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Meh, I like the dance mix better.
And yes, it IS backwards.
Mercy was given to me by Christ...I must give the same to others.
This article shows that this piece has been in the courts before.
...for recorded silence of the length 1m3s?
Slashdot - Where the slash is most definitely to the left.
By posting the phrase "1 minute 3 seconds of silence" you have digitally reproduced the entire work (in a compression format known as the English language).
jc42, you're a filthy copyright thief!
Oh crap. So am I.
compress well?
In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they're not.
But that would require the slashbots getting off their fat asses, getting dressed, getting out of their parents basement, going outside, and actually looking for work!
It's called "An electronic method fo timing out connections to mp3's containing silence by pointing like a bazillion web browsers at it"!
There's an article I read, findable at http://slashdot.org/~yerricde/journal/36125, mathematically demonstrating that with the legal ruling that it only takes an 8 note similarity for music to infringe, and given the limited range of what music can be, it's impossible to create a non-infringing song. I had an odd thought a few days though... since every song can be shown (presumably) to have at least an 8-note similarity to a prior piece of music which is in public domain, does this mean no copyright is valid?
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
They suspended his account already: "account suspended Your account has been suspended. We have sent you an email explaining why. This email should also contain information on how you can unsuspend your account."
2b || !2b =?
The original link is here, if anyone wishes to try it out.
Wikileaks, no DNS
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/audio bs=8000 count=63
Anything you say will be used in a court of law, and anything you don't say will be used to prosecute you for copyright infringement.
Man, I tried clicking the link and the sites down. the RIAA is moving much more efficiently now apparently. :D
Evil Walrus >83=
Look Out, Hollywood! Breaking The Law I'm gonna preface this by saying that I love Apple and their products and I hate the RIAA and their shortsightedness. My only complaint with Apple is the restrictive DRM built into iTunes Music Store songs (also, those new G5s could be a little cheaper). In protest, I've committed a real crime and documented the entire process. But it shouldn't be that way and that's why I've done it. Come and get me, Apple! Come and get me, RIAA! It all started with a free song code from the Pepsi iTunes promotion. I tilted several Pepsi bottles at the local Ralphs (just look for random letters under the cap), found me a winner and scored a free song. You may not know this, but there are several tracks that you can buy from that iTunes Music Store that consist of nothing more than total silence. Here's one from Ciccone Youth (a Sonic Youth side project): So I bought it. Then, I wanted to play this song on another device other than my iPod (I own a Creative MuVo TX MP3 Player). No go. The Digital Rights Management (DRM) makes it impossible to transfer the song to my other MP3 player unless I go through some ridiculous steps which involve burning the purchased song to a CD and then ripping it. This causes a noticeable loss of sound quality due to the song being recompressed. Totally unacceptable. I want pure silence. So I stripped the DRM using JHymn, a cross-platform application that unlocks your DRM'ed songs and keeps the original's sound quality. This is absolutely, positively illegal according to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). One law broken, one to go. One file is legal, the other one is definitely not. Can you spot the one that'll get me in trouble? I'll give you a hint: it's the one without the little lock over its icon. There's just one law left to break. I'm offering this very file for download here on my website. So go ahead, download it (1.1 MB) and break the law with me. Right click, save as, and crank it up on your favorite portable electronic music player. If this little stunt gets me in trouble, you'll be the first to know. You can help stop the RIAA and their nonsense at Downhill Battle. Find out more about protecting your digital rights online at the Electronic Frontier Foundation's website. Silence is golden. Get involved. This entry was posted on Thursday, February 17th, 2005 at 12:43 am and is filed under Apple, Hack, Free Stuff. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. One Response to 'Breaking The Law' 1. G Says: February 17th, 2005 at 4:51 am I feel like I'm making a difference. Leave a Comment
That's funny.
John Cage attended a performance of Glenn Branca and stood up in the middle and yelled "If this is the future of music then we're all going to hell!" And that was John Cage saying that!! Of course, a lot of John Cage's music is actually listenable. So I guess he just got fed up with the psuedo-chord progressions that Branca makes with his 12-100 guitar chorus.
If you can ever find some of his music (pretty rare in music stores), its worth listening too.
The silence isn't copyrighted, but that particular _recording_ of it is.
Silence is in the public domain.
If I record something in the public domain, my recording of it is what's copyrighted.
Additionally, if I record something _not_ in the public domain, the product has several copyrights.
The copyright of the piece performed, copyright of the actual performance and the copyright of the recording.
Copyright law is a good thing, being an idiot is not.
Put down the Cheet-os and Mountain Dew and use the 'net for something besides looking at porn to whack off to while yer waiting on Gentoo, huh?
Sorry to say this, but you've been beaten to it by DSN
since silence does not qualify for copyright, you'd be circumventing technological measures that control access to uncopyrighted works
Except for the fact that the same circumvention device that cracks uncopyrighted works can also be used to crack copyrighted works in violation of 17 USC 1201(a)(2) and (b).
One thing I find noticablly missing from this discussion is the fact that a recording of a performance of Cage's 4'33" would not, in fact, be the audio equivalent of a zero-byte file. Cage's intention, as documented here was that there can be no such thing as listening to the total abcense of sound. A recording of a performance of 4'33" should include the ambient noises from the recording situation (made better now through improved recording techniques).
I guess that one could "perform" the performance by listening to the whole piece on a computer where the music file is 4'33" of nulls and end up listening to the ambient noise in the listening environment (my ears ringing, in my case, due to audio abuse I subjected them to in my youth), but that would probably be more of a computer-induced performance of the piece rather than an accoustic recording of another performance, which would include audience noises (i.e. people shifting in their seats, polite coughs, etc.) as well as environmental ones (i.e. air handling system cycling, wind movement in an outdoor environment, etc.)
http://www.magnus-opus.com/index1.html
You may be breaching copyright law everytime you use your phone.
It's 1 minute and 2 seconds of silence.
If it can not be copyrighted then can you violate the DMCA on something that should never have been granted a copyright?
Yes, by owning a device that can be used both to crack copyrighted files and to crack uncopyrighted files. (Here, "to crack" means "to circumvent any measure protected under 17 USC 1201".) If a court finds that you made or acquired a device capable of cracking copyrighted works, then you're in trouble under 1201(a)(2) and/or (b) unless you can prove that the device is primarily useful for cracking uncopyrighted works.
Yeah, but you should know about the subliminal messages that were backward-masked in the recordings. I think that my friend's sister's ex-boyfriend saw Ferris Buler kill himslef at 31 flavors last nigh while listening to it.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
If I were to make my own MP3 silent tune of exactly the same length and put it online, would I be infringing their copyright?
Don't fuck with John Fucking Cage
Man, this song is such a ripoff of my 1:02 of silence! Forget the DMCA, this is copyright infringement!
Thankfully, no one has stolen my 1:12 of 60Hz hum, or the extended 1:32 remix yet.
"How did we let the entertainment industry get away with this?"
/. how the FBI became the enforcement arm for the RIAA and MPAA, and I always get modded as flamebait.
I've been asking for 5 years on
I've given up, because either there's a lot of trolls (or astro-turf'ers) from record companies, or most of the kids here are brainwashed about copyrights; they think a copyright is magically juju.
if the song (as in this case) was part of a larger work of art (the album) then it's got a frame of creativity around it
But if the "frame of creativity" does not accompany the download of an excerpt that by itself is not copyrightable, then it is an uncopyrightable excerpt from a copyrighted work, right?
no matter how Apple distributes it
If the label grants permission to distribute a single other than as "Album Only", then the label has to accept all the side effects that come with such permission.
Not as long as you paid them their publishing rights for the silent song. Being that it's a copyrighted work, and been done before, you are performing a cover of the song, and owe them a publishing royalty, since instead of copying their recording of silence, you made your own.
If you record your own silent song, you are performing a cover of it, and this is allowed if you pay them.
They submitted a blank page of lyrics and a sheet of tablature (probably consisting of rests, key signature, and tempo)to copyright the song itself (the written work), guarantee their right to the published work, right to perform it, and to legally guarantee a fee at the federal level, from those who perform it.
They had to lay out tempo, name it, set up how many measures it was etc., so despite being minimal, it is intellectual property.
However, if you do the same, and change the tempo and number of measures, it is a different song. Proving that your song was different would consist of pulling the tablature, sheet music, out and the copyright certificate out and showing the judge that your song was different. If it had different tempo, different number of measures, a different time signature, and/or a different key signature, it would be sufficiently different to be a different song.
if you wanted to get jiggy with it, you could even change tempo in midsong, or key signature.
It would, however, make you a derivative snot and make it appear that you can't come up with your own unique thing ; ) These guys have other songs that aren't silent, so in context, it's actually an original work that deserves consideration. It's part of the package.
I know it sounds silly, but there is artistic merit to this, in addition to the legal rights they have. This guy that ripped their silence and put it up on the internet, and announced it to the world, is playing with fire, unless he has his own silent song copyrighted and it adds up to the same amount of time.
l8,
AC
If I were to make my own MP3 silent tune of exactly the same length and put it online, would I be infringing their copyright?
You don't fuck with John Fucking Cage
I'd think if they digitally watermarked the 1'3" of silence, all you'd get is their 'secret' watermark. Shh. ;)
The /. lameness filter cried & cried about being so crappy.
Thank god there are work-arounds for HILLARIOUS posts like this!
As a music student, I feel perhaps it is my duty to point out that a proper live performance of 4'33" isn't actually "silence". If you were to hear the piece live, you'd be hearing the sounds of the nervous shuffles, coughs, expectant wheezes of all the people around you. That's the point of the piece.
Seeing as 4'33" is actually written out in music, to record the piece you must perform it, using a piano. Even a studio recording will not be perfect silence, and a live recording will have a noticeable amount of background noise, maybe with the occassional cough, giggle etc.
So I wondered how the various codecs handle silence. That seems like an easy optimization for the codec implementor. Here's what I did:
- created a 10-second silence sound file in Sound Studio 44.1/16/stereo
- exported it to AIFF
- opened it in QuickTime player and re-saved it as AAC/128/best quality
- opened that file and re-saved as AIFF
- encoded that file to MP3/192/joint stereo/best quality in Audeon
- opened that file in QuickTime Player and saved it to AIFF
- opened that file again in Sound Studio
I zoomed all the way in on the digital waveform, maximum magnification, and scrolled through all 10 seconds. All the bits were pinned at 0.So, while the guy is right in almost every case, he picked a really bad example to make this particular argument on. If he had burned to CD and ripped, assuming is CD-ROM drive is good he'd have pure silence in the re-ripped soundfile.
There must be something in the iTMS that's public domain that would make a better example.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Usually when a small site like that gets slashdotted, you get the "Over the Bandwidth Limit" page from your friendly provider. Instead, this is what I just found:
the link in the post is redirected to this URL:
http://host96.ipowerweb.com/suspended.html?
"Our funds have never taken part in toxic or death spiral convertible financings of any sort" -BayStar's managing partne
Sorry, I couldn't hear you.
Yes and no. Notes convey two types of information, pitch and duration. Rests only convey duration. So, when assessing rhythm, notes and rests are of equal significance. Melodies are recognized by both pitch sequence and rhythm, so rests contribute to the nature of a melody that is subject to copyright. A melody composed only of rests is a non-melody. Cage's 4'33" is best viewed as a performance piece, more like a dance than music. AFAIK, coreography is not covered by copyright. Pianist friends tell me it is very hard to perform.
Gary Dunn
Open Slate Project
Single and double apostrophes are common symbols for minutes and seconds, but not typically used in the context of time. One minute is 1/60th of a whole, and one second is 1/360th of a whole. The single and double apostrophes are used most commonly in stating the direction of a survey vector. (N 12* 13" 10' E, etc.).
Trivia of the Day: The proper name for the symbol which separates the operands of a fraction, be it diagonal or horizontal, is a solidus, not a slash or bar.
They are basically the same band. For anyone who's interested, SY gives away DRM-free music (mp3s) on their site.
...every time I pay tribute to someone who dies?
Mod these guys up. Better than Stattler and Waldorf, I tell ya. All it needs is a "yo mamma" to be true haute couture.
I like to place meaningful quotes in my sig, so people will know that I know what meaningful quotes are.
So that's what those 0k file size mp3s on the p2p networks are.
-dameron
What they told us in music appreciation class is that the point of John Cage's piece is that the audience does not realize that they are the ones giving the performance. There are always some ambient noises, and this piece gives us a chance to stop what we are doing and pay attention to our environment.
So it is hard to claim copyright on a recording of ambient noise, which by its nature is a "public good" (if it can be said to be any kind of good at all).
Hmm... This is an interesting question - I guess if the track is really silent the how can you copyright it (it's like me copyrighting a blank sheet of paper - though I guess I'd have to put the copyright notice on the back... or is that the front? Hmm...)? There is nothing to copyright - so the fault is that this shouldn't have been copyright in the first place.
I don't think the RIAA has much chance with this. Apple on the other hand seem to have a stronger case - you agree not to hack the files they "sell you" when you buy them (a condition of sale) and this is exactly what this guy has then done (he's broken a condition of sale). Now I suppose what Apple do about this is up to their own sense of humour - if they see that this is plainly stupid I guess they let it slide - I'm not convinced Apple have much of a sense of humour (sense of style perhaps).
Sorry, but none of that stuff you cited about copyright law (and got modded "Informative" for) is actually true, at least not in the US (or other countries party to the Berne Convention).
There are no minimum requirements on what a work must contain to be copyrightable, although doctrines of common sense do come into play when deciding cases of infringement. In reality, I COULD write and claim copyright on a book that contained only the word "the", and I could sue people for breach of copyright, but I would immediately have my cases thrown out on the grounds that others' use of the word "the" could not be proven to have been derived from my book.
Raw unadulterated silence IS content. Who are you to say it's not?
...and occasionally storming out, yelling "This is an outrage! I didn't pay $25 to hear nothing!"
you had me at #!
To compound his crime, ... I downloaded it to iTunes, and it played just fine (but now I suppose I'm a criminal, too).
Most copyright infringement isn't a crime.
Just wondering... didn't think Sonic Youth, Mike Watt, J Mascis, et al would really give enough of a shit to do anything...
The title is not a lyric.
A six figure sum for using John Cage's work?
I hope noone finds out about my vast collection of illegal copies of cage/batt recordings I have on this here spool...
'plex
Rich Gentlemen Hide - The Existential Comic
"If I were to make my own MP3 silent tune of exactly the same length and put it online, would I be infringing their copyright?"
The Law is silent on this issue.
Cloned foods give the statement "We had that last week!" a whole new meaning.
An important question left out here is which is the better purchase: 1'3" of Silence or 4'33" of Silence? On one hand, at 99 cents for each, 4'33" is the much better value as you get nearly three times as much silence for your dollar. On the other hand, 1'3" is obviously of much higher quality, as it manages to express in less than two minutes what 4'33" takes nearly five minutes to express. So which is the better purchase for penny-pinching lovers of post-modern music?
Maybe it's not a song at all, but a secret message hidden in all the zeroes.
Maybe it's just me, but I think him being sued is in of itself part of the artwork. The "song" is organic. The concept's original meaning has extended to iTMS where you can actually buy the track...or try a slice of silence. So great, extend the artistic concept through the whole process. Have *this* be the case that is used where the DRM was hacked, the song traveled around on the P2P networks and the whole issue went all the way to the Supreme Court. Now *that* would be beautiful!
The song is "(Silence)" off of Ciccone Youth's The Whitey Album. Here is an iTMS link.
dd if=/dev/zero \ /tmp/OneMinuteThreeSecondsOfSilence
of=/tmp/OneMinuteThreeSecondsOfSilence \
bs=96768 count=1000
oggenc -r -R 192000 -q 10 \
-o OneMinuteThreeSecondsOfSilence.ogg \
Then share the file.
This created a 28977 byte ogg file of silence with a play time of 1 minute, 3 seconds. Note that this is a very high quality stereophonic file with a 192KHz sample rate and 16 bits per sample (oggenc doesn't seem to like more than 16 bits/sample or more than 2 channels).
Of course, I'm sure there's probably a way to do this in a single line, or you can skip the second step and just share the PCM file.
-Aaron
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
420th post.
I seem to remember a big flap about companies that published information (like telephone directories) who were pissed because they considered that "copyrighted material". If I'm not mistaken, raw data is not subject to copyright- copyright protects the manner in which the data is presented, but not the data itself. This implies that if a certain degree of creativity has not been applied, there is nothing to copyright. With the corporate-bought political system in the US, and Bush in office, this may have changed since I last heard about it.
sed -e s/96768/48384/
Doh, put in the size for the quadraphonic version I tried to make with oggenc -C 4
(if multiple copies of this appear, I appologize... Slashdot keeps giving me Service Unavailable)
-Aaron
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
;)
Even as a double music major who went programmer, I never would've thought that I would ever see Slashdot and John Cage on the same page.
You have reached the end of the internet. Goodbye.
> If I were to make my own MP3 silent tune of
> exactly the same length and put it online, would
> I be infringing their copyright?
No.
a) The work contains no protected elements.
b) Independent invention is a complete defense.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
...if you put it on "repeat," it syncs up perfectly with the michael jackson version of "the wizard of oz"
if i'm a grammar nazi, you're an illiteracy nazi.
I guess you are probably talking about this article titled "What color are your bits?"
...and I guess I'm being a bit of a karma whore, but I liked the article, so never mind.
While I would say that Hendrix Cosby is the best track on that CD, I really am not sure about that track being pure silence. As in a mic may have been on... I'll check when I have time.
If you make a recording of 1'3" of silence and title it as that then you have violated the copyright, but if you advertise/title/use it in a different way to the original - ie not in the context of a silent piece of music but in the context of a play-list separator for example, then you're ok.
Now it may be that the original 1'3" of silence (i haven't heard it) was actually subtle background noise, perhaps in a recording studio, therefore technically not '0' silence*, you may still be violating the copyright even if your version is '0' silence if it can be shown that you were taking the same concept, or it maybe that you could show that your absolute silence was in fact a substantially different derivative work that added an alternative artistic expression, in this case even its length could be the same.
This brings me to varying the length of the piece - you may claim it as a sample (im unsure of how sampling works in US copyright law) if it is sufficiently short and/or repeated, obviously this repeating argument is easier to prove for '0' silence because you can almost certainly build a convincing case that you sampled any particular length of time between 0 and 1'3", although unfortunately so can the opposition.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
that the contents so protected never make it into the public domain because there are no copies that can fall into the public domain. The publisher, on the other hand, can reissue the same content with a new copyright over and over again.
This may well violate the Constitution, since it really is contradicts the "for a limited time" clause.
If you play it backwards, you can hear a silent evil message.
Quite disturbing.
I've been planning to write a bit on copyright for a long time and finally I did and it references this story. It's more of an intro for those who don't know much about the stuff, but you might read it if you want. If I get positive feedback I'll post some follow-ups. ;)
= article&sid=295&mode=&order=0&thold=0
And please be merciful to our server in Poland we're still on baud 9600
This is the first story on the frontpage of http://aboutculture.pl/ and the exact link is http://aboutculture.pl/modules.php?name=News&file
Your comments are highly welcome.
No Silicon Heaven? Then where do all the calculators go?
I've never heard a recording with such a low noise floor! My sound program doesn't even register anything. And I also measured no quantization distortion, which is a feat considering they didn't use any low-order dithering.
Unless I'm very wrong, titles can't be copyrighted. This is why, for example, you see movies and books, years apart (but not longer than copyright lifetime) with the same titles, but nothing else in common, eg. "Blind Date" [boy, was I confused when that wasn't the movie I'd expected]. In addition to my anecdotal evidence, I do seem to recall reading an actual lawyer commenting on this, though that was at least 15 years ago...
Perhaps if the original publisher was sued for fraud ( calling silence "music"), then that would solve this particular problem easily.
Be quiet! I'm trying to listen to the song and everyone keeps talking!
Actually, I think that whatever comes of this it'll be interesting...
If the RIAA and Apple do nothing then they'll effectively be saying that they'll do nothing when you strip the DRM from a copyrighted file that they sell and you begin distributing it.
If they do pursue it then they'll look like asses suing a guy for distributing a copy of silence and make themselves look worse in the eyes of the general public.
Either way it's a lose-lose situation for the RIAA and Apple IMHO. I kinda like that!
I much prefer the electronic arrangement by the Boards Of Canada called Magic Window. It appears as the last track on their Geodaddi album. It has a much richer feel than Cage's piece and can really get the dancefloor standing still.
Task Mangler
It can't be illegial, it's just a cover of a song, thats done all the time. As long as the author is the artist of the song, it's leagal. Although I still prefer the origional, it just sounds better :-)
So, will the RIAA now hire people to stand around inthe woods to make sure that falling tree gets heard?
Did John Cage get really creative and use an odd time signaure like 7:8?
This guy had the same idea over a year ago, except he created a "a mash-up style remix" of 9 silent songs. Not only that, he's selling the result for $0.99.
There is a fellow in OZ who compiled a songs using telephone tones. His creation: Songs consisting of every telephone number of every Australian citizen. By dialing any phone number you are breaking copyright :-)
But I have lost the link... Does anybody have it?
The original legal problem stemed from including a credit of the original artists silent work, which meant he used it without permission. You could record a different silence, say in a freezer room, which would make your silence a different and original silence.
There was an unknown error in the submission.
Who is "they"? I don't recall anything like this happening. Urban legend?
It's imperative that people stop using the term "Digital Rights Management". That term was designed specifically to mislead the public. If you use that term, you are helping Big Media in their efforts to steal rights away from the public.
The term "Digital Restrictions Management" is much more accurate.
...I wish I hadn't thought of, and done this, over a year ago just so I could be slashdotted here and now.
Remember Harly Davidson trying to copyright the noise from their motorcycle? They were flat out denied.
Because if nothingness, silence, absence of contents or the like are copyrightable, I'm gonna write this nice program and copyright it:
///<sig
%S%^
The above 4 byte sequence is hearby patented and
by reading this post, you have commited an act of
piracy. But I'll be easy on you, just send $5000
to me in unmarked bills, and I'll forget you ever
did that, OK?
Isn't that like the solar powered flashlight, or the submarine with the screen door?
How, exactly, do you have 1.25 feet of silence? Honestly, where do people get these figures from? So let's see, if the speed of sound is 1,115.48 feet per second, then 1.25 feet of silence is about 1.12ms. Or about twice as much silence as I get to enjoy in an average day.
It sounds like my friends talking about their 2.8gigabyte P4s, and their 512megahertz of RAM.
(Note: I'm just making a joke about the minute/second markers being the same as imperial feet and inch markers. Although I'm sure someone will feel the need to post about it and tell me so before reading this far anyway).
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Assuming 'tune' and 'music' are mostly interchangeable, lets look at the definitions (courtesy of Merriam-Webster Online):
and here is the definition of 'tune':
What do all the relevant definitions have in common? They all deal with *sound*, not the lack of it. If you can claim rights to silence, then I'm going to buy your 'tune', and then sue you for false advertizing.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
I think the phrase is "If I were to record a 'cover' of the tune..."
Make sure your silence is of good quality, you don't want to offend the original artist with a poor performance.
I'm going to copywrite blank paper!! Ooooh! the royalties! my beautifull art being copied everywhere!
I stole this signature
If I make a mp3 of silence that is 1 minute 5 seconds long, am I sampling their work, and would it be considered a derivitive work?
Not sure about the number of notes, but it's indisputable than judges only look at notes there...
Very few people know that Michael Jackson has been [that's Dagospia.com, the local equivalent of Matt Drudge] sued by an Italian singer for copyright infringement.
The links are in Italian and the trial was in Italy, but you may find some info in Spanish on Google, as the guy is also popular in South America. Basically, Al Bano claimed his song "I Cigni di Balaka" had been plagiarized in Jackson's "Will You Be There?"
As much as I hate the two, I really don't see any possible way Jackson might ever have heard about this Al Bano guy. However, the lengthy trial (2001 through 2003, IIRC) finally awarded Al Bano a victory, as the judges found "significant similarities" between the songs, although it was never stated Jackson had purposefully plagiarized the Italian singer.
If you have ever seen the score, it has several pages of rests of various lengths.
Ok but... How are you going to demonstrate the later song has the same rests, especially if it has never been written to paper?
AFAIK you don't need to write down your score in order to copyright a song. I might argue in court that where the earlier song has two consecutive 1/4 rests, I have been "playing" four consecutive 1/8 rests, and so forth.
I don't think resorting to original scores would be useful on the plaintiff's side, unless of course the second "artist" has been stupid enough to write down a sufficiently similar score, and use it.
On the general issue of x minutes of silence being a stupid, head up one's own arse, pretentious load of crap idea, of course it is.
However if you think about it, the silent tracks are only a waste of money because they're so inaccurate. I'd happily pay good money for an entirely silent track that was exactly 4.123332949843985439843843... minutes long - ie where the mantissa contained a couple of MB of information (with a good beat)!
One foot and three inches of silence CmdrTaco?
It means I'll be playing that tune all the time, for anyone to hear.
Some people have just *way* too much time and money..
Insert
Stop humiliating us,
We are fed up with slashdot making us look like monkeys!
signed,
RIAA team
i done this idea over a year ago..... this guy is way behind me...
I think the sheer ridiculousness of the target is the point of the attempt - most non-p2pers mental processes go like this:
If this guy gets in trouble by "copying" something as worthless as 1'3" of silence, the sheer ridiculousness of the story shows the problem with the DMCA - you get in trouble for merely openening the lock, regardless of what's inside it or whether it should even be locked in the first place.
Had he cracked the DRM on anything with any value whatsoever he's be a pirate/copyright infringer, and many people would agree that he should get in trouble for it. This way he's flagrantly violating the DMCA, but even at the uninformed emotional level that most peopel enguage in the p2p debate from, it's really really hard to argue that he should be punished for it.
Everything in moderation, including moderation itself
I wonder what the compression rating on the mp3 is?
Does the bit-rate affect it much?
If you get modded down for a first post... What do you get for a last post?
Mp3 gets down to 32kbit/s, even 8kbit/s if you change the sampling rate. Ogg gets down to ~0.7kbit/s but that still is 9706 bytes for 1'3" silence. Ironically I can do better using an uncopressed wav file, mono, 8bit, 1Hz, ~0.014kbit/s, 107 byte. Although I must admit I have some problems playing this file without telling the player to resample it, it clearly is 1'3" of pure silence.
http://www.unix-ag.uni-hannover.de/~ingo/silence.w av if you want to hear for yourself.
Disclaimer: This is not the silence mentioned above but an exception of my own /dev/null.
Im going to copyright the letters "DRM" then make it illegal for the DRM to do anything. heheh, sue everybody!
You know how anoying it is when you get a song stuck in your head and you can't quite remember the melody or the lyrics?
Man, that song is a RIP-OFF of one of Pootie Tang's top hits!
Never hit your grandmother with a shovel, for it leaves a bad impression on her mind...
if you create your own 1'03" of silence. The copyright on recordings doesn't protect against you making your own recording of the same music.
The copyright on the music itself could take effect, however. So if John Cage could prove that your 1'03" of silence is a partial recording of his work, you could owe him royalties for the composition.
When you copy an existing recording, you owe royalties for the recording. I'm not sure about song-writer's royalties in this case. The RIAA (or the individual record companies) can sue you for copying recordings. Paul McCartney can sue you if you make a cover version of "Help!" (along with thousands of other works by other musicians).
We are the 198 proof..
The case that you're thinking about is Feist v. Rural. Basically, the Supreme Court said that a telephone directory does not have any new expression in it -- it's a compilation of facts organized in a standard way.
The requirement of original expression in a copyrighted work is minimal, but it's still there. If they had, say, organized the directory by how weird they thought the person's name was, it would have been protected. The underlying facts -- the individual listings, though are just facts and are not protected. So, if somebody else took the sorted-by-wierdness listings and sorted them alphabetically, the end result would have been in the public domain again.
Should note that copyright is actually pretty uniform through the western world -- the Boerne Convention has effectively standardized copyright in the western world. Has nothing to do with President Bush -- the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act happened during the Clinton Administration.
Incidently, in US Law, you do not have to "obtain" a copyright -- you just create something that's copyrightable and you automatically get the copyright at the moment of creation.
Rubbish; I doubt you can provide any reliable reference for this claim. Cage was disinterested in pop music and it's unlikely he would have attended any Branca concert (especially given that he would have been about 70 at that point.) I once attended a concert where Cage did Q&A where an earnest guy asked him what he thought of The Beatles; his reply was that he didn't think about them at all.
Besides, Branca concerts are incredibly loud and anyone who yelled anything would be barely be heard by themselves.
Single and double apostrophes are [...] not typically used in the context of time.
Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong. From sheet music to recorded tracks on CDs, tapes, etc., tick marks are in extremely typical use.
I've performed this in public numerous times! Are they going to come after me for royalties!?
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Assuming the mall lets you record something there. A cousin of mine in high school tried to shoot a student movie in our local mall, and the management kicked her out. If they won't even allow THAT...
"Once we've identified and embraced our sickness, we'll have strength...and that's when we get dangerous." - John Waters