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?"

Comments

Well

[Realistic_Dragon]

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.

Re:Well

[pla]

Or do you think they mught just be committing quiet obscenities? Better ban it anyway just in case.

Why not? They went after The Kingsmen for "Louie Louie", taking its unintelligibility as "proof" that it has nasties in it...

Re:Well

[Dr.Zap]

What's this going to do to samplers? Any pause in a song will open it for lawsuits!

Re:Well

[EngMedic]

and Frank Zappa's instrumental album, Jazz from Hell, got a "parental warning: explicit lyrics" tag, too. I'm still trying to figure that one out.

Re:Well

[Draknor]

I'd rather like to think that silence is already in the public domain.

No, you're mistaking "absence" for "silence" - as in, the absence of anything new in the public domain because of perpetual copyright.

If you've listened to the public domain recently, you would also clearly realize that silence is not a part of it, with particular thanks to car alarms and cell phones.

=)

Re:Well

[cayenne8]

" I'd rather like to think that silence is already in the public domain."

Tell that to Simon and Garfunkel...

:-)

Re:Well

[suckmysav]

John Lennon & Yoko Ono had a track on their "Life With the Lions" album that was called "Two Minutes Silence" and thats all it was. Two minutes of silence so you could say that this 1.3 minutes of silence is just an incomplete rip-off of that track and is therefore a blatent copyright breach.

Re:Well

[Meski]

Suggested title: "One hand clapping"

Re:Well

[fforw]

John Lennon & Yoko Ono had a track on their "Life With the Lions" album that was called "Two Minutes Silence" and thats all it was. Two minutes of silence so you could say that this 1.3 minutes of silence is just an incomplete rip-off of that track and is therefore a blatent copyright breach.

I think that the John Lennon & Yoko Ono song itself was just stolen out of John Cage's 4'33 from 1952.

John Cage

[suso]

Actually, if it was John Cage, you would hear the performer turning the page.

Re:John Cage

[Anonymous Coward]

No, if it was John Cage he would shadow-kick your ass.

Re:John Cage

[Antibozo]

Moreover, John Cage would explain that 4'33" is not simply 4'33" of silence. He did actually write a score for this piece, note by note, and comprised of three movements. He then made all the notes tacet, and added up their time at a tempo of his choice to come up with the durations for the movements. If you knew what the original notes are, however, you could imagine the piece while it is performed.

In addition, the three movements are punctuated by the performer closing and then reopening the piano lid.

Re:John Cage

[Chundra]

Re:John Cage

[gmaestro]

I could have sworn the Cage 4'33" was usually performed by memory. So while the sound of the piano lid opening and closing, perhaps the performer placing his watch on the stand might be heard, there should be no pages turning.

You are correct, however, that the point of the Cage piece is environmental noise, a concept I'm sick of explaining.

Re:John Cage

[rune-bare-rune]

The representatives of John Cages estate appearantly thought Mike Batt infringed Cages copyright with a track on his 2002 album "Planets".

Quote:
"As my mother said when I told her, 'which part of the silence are they claiming you nicked?'. 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."

Re:John Cage

[DigitalHammer]

No, he'd do the splits and shadow-punch you in the crotch.

Re:John Cage

[Antibozo]

The point of 4'33" is not so much environmental noise as the act and experience of listening.

A friend of mine who is not a John Cage fan was once dragged to a performance of 4'33", not knowing anything about Cage or the piece. A short way into it, he got fed up, stood up and berated his companion loudly, and marched out of the room. No doubt this was one of the better performances.

Re:John Cage

[Rei]

You can't copyright chord progressions and simple beats? Take it one step further, and Philip Glass will be in some serious trouble. ;)

Re:John Cage

[Null537]

But in the end he'd sign a picture of himself for you.

Re:John Cage

[rwise2112]

Hmmmm..

Is that 4'33" of silence, your own creative work, or a picture of an invisible galaxy?

Re:John Cage

[Strudleman]

Bahahahaha!

This has got to be the funniest post I've ever seen. Thank you so much, I'm crying :)

Re:John Cage

[mobby_6kl]

Somebody already mentioned Frank Zappa here, which reminded me of this:

Guy In The Audience: "Whipping Post"!
FZ: Say that again please
GITA: "Whipping Post"!
FZ: "Whipping Post"? Ok, just a second . . . (Do you know that?) Oh sorry, we don't know that one. Anything else? Hum me a few bars of it, please, just show me how it goes, please. Just sing, sing me "Whipping Post" and then maybe we'll play it with you
GITA: Ooh-ooh-ooh . . .
FZ: Thank you very much. And now . . . Judging from the way you sang it, it must be a John Cage composition, right? Here we go, "Montana."

Re:John Cage

[Golias]

See the 1990 American Masters documentary on John Cage, in which he states explicitly, "4'33" was written note by note."

As with any dispute of fact, it's Google to the rescue:

4'33" was written in the summer of 1952 just after Cage returned to New York City from Black Mountain College, where he had been invited to participate as a teacher and composer in this rural, private-school environment, and worked with other important figures in the art world. It was here that Rauschenberg did his White Paintings (1951) and Cage first saw them, provoking 4'33". It was here that the first multimedia "happening" occurred, Cage's Theater Piece No. 1, in which many of the faculty participated. It was also here that Cage planned work on Williams Mix and first used the time bracket notation that became so prevalent in his later music.

4'33" is written for any instrument or combination of instruments. It is, however, usually done as a piano piece. This is probably because of the precedent set by the premiere performance, since the score does not specify a piano or any other instrument. The score is in three movements. Curiously, it has existed in at least six different versions (two different manuscripts and four different editions), although only two of these are different in performance.

The original Woodstock manuscript, dated August 1952, is now lost and was written in conventional grand staff notation, containing measures of silence. It is here referred to as the Woodstock ms. It was this score that David Tudor used for the premiere performance. Tudor made at least two reconstructions of this score for his own performances.

The original was on music paper, with staffs, and it was laid out in measures like the Music of Changes except there were no notes. But the time was there, notated exactly like the Music of Changes except that the tempo never changed, and there were no occurrences -- just blank measures, no rests -- and the time was easy to compute. The tempo was 60.

So there you go. No notes. The process of composition being described as "note for note" was just Cage's overcompensation due to his worry about his work being taken as a joke if he did not go out of his way to put effort into creating it.

Re:John Cage

[jc42]

the courts found that such attribution proved that Batt's minute of silence was derived from Cage's silent work.

Actually, the courts found no such thing, because they were never consulted. It was settled out of court.

Rather a pity, IMHO. It might have been useful to have an actual decision.

Re:John Cage

[Antibozo]

You're confusing the manuscript with the writing process. As with a number of Cage's pieces, the actual notes were chosen using chance operations. The fact that the manuscript had no notes written on it is due to the notes' already having been rendered tacet. No doubt there is a page somewhere in the world where Cage wrote down the operations and their result before producing the manuscript you are referring to.

Similarly, Cage once made a film of a chess game he played with Marcel Duchamp, wherein the exposure settings for the film camera were determined by chance operations. Parts of the film are completely black. This doesn't mean there wasn't a chessboard in the frame; it means that the process didn't record its image. The manuscript for 4'33" is like the black segments of the chess film--the image is there, but the notes have been erased.

If you actually go back and read the document you quoted, without attribution, among many other details, you'll find the following quote from Cage:

I wrote it note by note, just like the Music of Changes [1951]. That's how I knew how long it was when I added the notes up. It was done like a piece of music, except there were no sounds -- but there were durations.

We may never know whether the notes Cage wrote for 4'33" had pitches. It may be that he didn't generate enough chance data to derive pitches from, or that he merely didn't bother to extract the pitch information from his data, since it wasn't needed. In the latter case, if we knew the process and had the data, we could indeed produce the pitches to go along with the durations.

But assuming, for the sake of [your] argument, that no information for pitches was ever even generated, we could have a semantic debate as to whether durations by themselves, without pitch, constitute "notes". The fact is that, underlying 4'33", at the very least, there is a sequence of durations of specific durations. These constitute a rhythm; would you argue that a specific rhythm written out on a score to be played on a snare drum is not written "note by note"? Now take away the snare drum.

Finally, consider that rests often occur in places where a specific pitch is expected, such as the middle of a phrase; one hears the pitch in one's mind even though it is not heard. 4'33" can be regarded as a piece where all of the notes are expected, yet heard only in one's mind. It illustrates how the act of listening for music enables the mind to hear it, even if the guy at the piano isn't touching any keys.

Re:John Cage

[Antibozo]

I suggest you read a bit more background about the piece; see the link cited above. The piece was, in fact, composed note by note using randomly generated data produced using a combination of the I Ching and a deck of tarot cards. The resulting data was converted into note durations using a systematic method of Cage's device, and the durations were then summed to produce the lengths of the three movements. The original durations are not recorded on the performance score, so any other gestalt of environmental events is free to take the place of the original notes comprising the piece.

Indeed, the commonly regarded "point" of the piece is to engage the audience into listening to its environment as music. The piece does not, however, have to be performed in a concert hall, and no one needs to be shocked. Cage later stated that the specific durations of the movements were not important. In other words, one is free to perform 4'33" at any time, for any duration, for one's own, or someone else's entertainment or interest. The "performer" is anyone who creates the context of a performance of 4'33", by sitting down at a piano and not playing it, switching on a microphone and not speaking into it, or stepping outside and making a conscious decision to listen to the world. The "performance" is the moment of Zen that results.

This is just dumb.

[Slartibartfast]

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.

Re:This is just dumb.

[shurikt]

I haven't tested it, but there's a pretty good chance that the digitally encoded silence actually contains some white noise or other artifact of the digitizing process. Would that be copyrightable?

Re:This is just dumb.

[Pionar]

It has nothing to do with how many notes. It's whether it's marginally creative. In this case, I think it'd be up to a judge. A consumer would argue that silence is inherently not creative. A copyright holder would argue that it's not just the silence, it's the position of it on the album, the significance of the length, the "innovativeness" of silence as an expression of art, and so forth. Frankly, since the threshold for creativity is quite low (hell, you can copyright a directory of people just because you've ordered it in a certain way), I think Apple's got a pretty good case.

Re:This is just dumb.

[milgr]

If you have ever seen the score, it has several pages of rests of various lengths. Recordings of performances of this piece include the background noise - including the pianist turning pages of the score, frequently people coughing or shifting restlessly in their seats.

By the way, Cage's piece is "4'33" of silence" (and it does last 4 minutes and 33 seconds).

Not only does it bring up the question of what is Art, but what is copyrightable. There was a suit about this (The suit was settled with John Cage's estate getting a 6 figure settlement). See http://www.billboard.com/bb/article_display.jsp?vn u_content_id=1710115

Re:This is just dumb.

[bani]

depends. what's the key, b-flat?

Re:This is just dumb.

[js7a]

I suspect the "six figures" mentioned are something like "$", "1", ".", "0", "0", and ".". What a great publicity stunt for Batt and Cage's legacy, no matter what the amount. Well done!

OMFG

[Anonymous Coward]

You people waste so much time and thought finding new ways to split hairs. Get back to work.

Re:OMFG

[jbarr]

Yes, it does sound absurd, but I really don't think this is splitting hairs because it is specifically addressing the extent to which the DMCA can be enforced. This could very well become a "test case" that might prove to be important.

Then again...

Re:OMFG

[Captain Scurvy]

In other words, we should never try to threaten the system (which is designed to make money for our employers) by pointing out its flaws; we should be busy making money for our employers instead.

You're my boss, aren't you?

Re:OMFG

[Phat_Tony]

Actually, it's all part of their evil plan. They will copyright silence, then refuse to sell that track anymore, and then sue anyone who's NOT listening to music, as they are listening to silence, which is copyrighted, and hasn't been legally purchased.

Therefore, you must always listen to music to avoid fines. In this way, they will sell more music.

Quality

[theantipop]

That song has still got to be better than most of the music on iTunes.

Re:Quality

[fembots]

Yes, it's running at a superior bitrate of 2Gbit/s, I played it on my 6+1 and it was flawless.

Re:Quality

[Taladar]

And I bet your speaker power consumption was quite low as well during playing it.

You're Under Arrest!

[serutan]

You have the right to remain silent.

Re:You're Under Arrest!

[rookworm]

You have the right to remain silent.

But you must pay royalties to the copyright holder(s).

Infringing on the copyright?

[Corporate Drone]

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?

Well... you could always claim that your MP3 was a collection of 5 seconds snippets of the "tune", and plead Fair Use...

I looked into the RIAA's stance on this.

[bobdotorg]

But only got the message,

"Nothing to hear here. Move along."

You wouldn't be infringing their copyright

[Toutatis]

At least in some countries there is a right to make a parody.

Speaking of which

[MostlyHarmless]

I wanted to find an mp3 of 4'33'' the other day. I searched all the filesharing networks... there wasn't one *anywhere*!

Already Slashdotted

[BarryJacobsen]

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.

Re:Already Slashdotted

[funny-jack]

And here is the link to that cache. The pictures are even still working.

For now.

|_

[GillBates0]

Re:|_

[Meumeu]

Do you realize you are infringing their copyright by writing the lyrics here?

Re:|_

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Now I just need to copyright an empty space of a specific shape. Maybe I should DRM a PDF that is just a single blank page of paper.

Apple doesn't have to stop them

[bigtallmofo]

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?

Down for the count

[endtwist]

Go figure, we silenced a clip of silence.

Don't tell anybody

[serutan]

I'm about to break the exercise video market wide open.

Six.
Minute.
Abs!

Re:Don't tell anybody

[DaHat]

6 minutes? Why spend that long? I am happy to announce my new line of products under the brand name of... Instant* Abs!

*Notice: Results may vary

thoughtcrime

[sum.zero]

it doesn't matter if they vocalize the words, we all know they are THINKING them.

sum.zero

Re:thoughtcrime

[TheViffer]

Thoughtcrime? Dont think so.

This is clearly a copyright matter. You just can't take Ashlee Simpson's works and post them freely on the internet. She needs to eat too.

Re:thoughtcrime

[Rei]

Clearly it is a copyright matter, as the person's account was suspended ;)

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.

Re:thoughtcrime

[StikyPad]

There's always one guy who doesn't get it, and one moderator who proves the system ineffective.

Precedent

[alphakappa]

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..

Re:Precedent

[jeblucas]

Why has he violated the DMCA? Doesn't that require that he make, sell, or produce a technology or service that circumvents DRM? In fact, if you read the DMCA (crazy, I know), you'll find:

Section 1201 divides technolgical measures into two categories: measures that prevent unauthorized access to a copyrighted work and measure that prevent unauthorized copying of a copyrighted work. Making or selling devices or services that are used to circumvent eith category of technological measure is prohibited in certain circumstances described below. As to the circumvention in itself, the provision prohibits circumventing the first category of technological measures, but not the second.

I know this guy thinks he's a hilarious supergenius, but:

• you can't copyright silence, so this is moot.
• you are allowed to circumvent DRM to copy copyrighted material that you own.

Everyone's an expert. Read this: http://www.copyright.gov/legislation/dmca.pdf

Re:Precedent

[ThatsNotFunny]

Civil Law != Criminal Law.

An analogy which compares the violation of one to the violation of the other will always be inherently flawed.

According to the US Copyright Office at http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ1.html#wwp :

Copyright protects "original works of authorship" that are fixed in a tangible form of expression. The fixation need not be directly perceptible so long as it may be communicated with the aid of a machine or device. Copyrightable works include the following categories:

1. literary works;
2. musical works, including any accompanying words
3. dramatic works, including any accompanying music
4. pantomimes and choreographic works
5. pictorial, graphic, and sculptural works
6. motion pictures and other audiovisual works
7. sound recordings
8. architectural works

Since silence is not music, it is not protected by #2. Since silence is, by definition, the absence of sound, it cannot be a "sound recording", and therefore cannot be protected by #7.

Re:Precedent

[dafz1]

The file was never copied, so your point about circumventing DRM to copy is moot. If you read the summary provided, it says:

"This distinction was employed to assure that the public will have the continued ability to make fair use of copyrighted works. Since copying of a work may be a fair use under appropriate circumstances, section 1201 does not prohibit the act of circumventing a technological measure that prevents copying. By contrast, since the fair use doctrine is not a defense to the act of gaining unauthorized access to a work, the act of circumventing a technological measure in order to gain access is prohibited. "

What the article talked about was using JHymn to modify the file, "circumventing a technological measure in order to gain (unauthorized) access" to the iTunes file and allowing the file to be played on a different mp3 player. Apple does not authorize such access, nor does the contract Apple signed with Ciconne Youth's record company.

Copyright

[ojthecat]

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.

Old news

[thebra]

This has been done.

Still dumb, but I'll answer, anyway.

[Slartibartfast]

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.

Re:Still dumb, but I'll answer, anyway.

[darkpixel2k]

I guess we should all observe about a minute of silence then...

Re:Still dumb, but I'll answer, anyway.

[iCEBaLM]

You can sue anybody for anything, the question is, would you win the suit?

DRM vs. Copyright confusion

[That's Unpossible!]

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.

Re:DRM vs. Copyright confusion

[That's Unpossible!]

Take the Cage recording. If someone had had the forethought to place a microphone of there own, right next to where the original was, could _they_ copyright the recording?

Yes. However, it is highly likely that Cage would not have given permission to record his piece being "played," so the point is moot.

Could I record what I hear at the Mall, and sell it?

Yes.

But it may be a DCMA violation.

[L-Train8]

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.

Re:But it may be a DCMA violation.

[serutan]

Exactly. The issue isn't copyright per se but copy protection. It doesn't matter if the thing being protected is copyrighted or not, because the protection itself is protected. You could get in trouble for breaking DRM even if the content is public domain, because Congress says the imaginary box containing that individual copy is sacred.

If you think about it, DRM is like a privatized turbo version of copyright. Copyright infringement is a civil matter between two parties. DRM breakage is a federal crime involving fines and jail time. Pretty sweet deal to have the government investigate and prosecute your lawsuits for you for free! How did we let the entertainment industry get away with this?

obviously not copyright infringement

[Fahrvergnuugen]

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

Huh?

[el_gordo101]

One foot three inches of music?

Copyrighted silence?

[Exluddite]

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?

Why buy when you can make your own?

[tuxlove]

Just be sure you don't use this to generate a file 1'33" in length... :)

/* Outputs a silent WAV file of whatever length desired. */
int z[44100];main(int n,char **a){int s=176400,h[]={0x46464952,0,0x45564157,0x20746d66,1 6,131073,44100,s,1048580,0x61746164,0};int t=atoi(a[1]);*(h+1)=t*s+32;*(h+10)=t*s;write(1,h,4 4);while(t--)write(1,z,s);}

Listen to it backwards...

[techmuse]

1'3" of silence sounds very impressive when played backwards - especially the backwards lyrics. :)

Re:Listen to it backwards...

[SamSim]

I'm also told it syncs with The Wizard Of Oz in the freakiest way.

Dont Forget Pootie Tang!

[jwegy]

I'm sure pootie has his silent song copyrighted!

RIAA's new tactic.

[bobdotorg]

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

Re:RIAA's new tactic.

[jc42]

Heh. I really think that I should send an apology to him for mentioning his site on /.

Actually, the problem is probably even worse than just /., since I've found a similar link on Dave Barry's blog (registration required). I wonder how many readers Dave has, compared to /.? I have seen comments on his blog about how they've "slashdotted" some poor server. I wonder if the Miami Herald has the bandwidth to withstand the onslaught ... ;-)

John Cage

[jargon]

It is useful to see some of this within the larger copyright context of John Cage and Mike Batt's copyright dispute over Cage's piece, 4' 33".
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.

It's not really silence!

[Honorbound]

If you play if backwards and turn up the volume you'll hear, "Developers, developers, developers, developers!"

I want a silent MP3!

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

I want to play it on a cell-phone, charged by air!

Re:I want a silent MP3!

[brianosaurus]

Ha!

Use it as your ringtone. Piss off everyone who tries to call you when you never, ever answer.

Um ... okay?

[Durandal64]

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?

Re:Um ... okay?

[LesPaul75]

But, the point is that because of the ridiculous copyright laws in this country, someone could sue. And they might even win, based on the precendents set by the RIAA's other lawsuits (e.g. suing 14 year olds and winning).

I think this is a fantastic example of just how nonsensical DRM, the RIAA, and the music industry in general are. Kudos to the guy who thought of it.

Wow Compression

[jfried]

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.

Re:Wow Compression

[LesPaul75]

Actually a good point about MP3 (and similar) compression schemes. They have a fixed bitrate. So when you compress a song, you say "compress this audio down to 128K bits per second" and then the algorithm throws away all of the frequency data that won't fit into that many bits. So, even if it's dead silence, the algorithm is still going to fill up 128Kb for each second of silence (even though it's effectively filling that 128Kb with zeroes). Even if you use VBR (variable bit rate) compression, the algorithm still tries to average a certain overall bitrate, so the result is the same. It would be nice if you could just say "compress this song using as many bits as you need to make it sound good," but unfortunately the phrase "to make it sound good" is very subjective. The algorithm doesn't know what sounds good.

Re:Wow Compression

[Leto-II]

Even if you use VBR (variable bit rate) compression, the algorithm still tries to average a certain overall bitrate, so the result is the same. It would be nice if you could just say "compress this song using as many bits as you need to make it sound good," but unfortunately the phrase "to make it sound good" is very subjective. The algorithm doesn't know what sounds good.

Bzzt. Wrong. VBR schemes in formats such as OGG, MPC, and others are based on "quality" as opposed to bitrate. There's certainly a correlation between the two, but the idea is to have compression levels linked to quality as opposed to size.

Even with MP3 you can have VBR encodings that go down to 32 bps during silence. Check out LAME's "alt-preset" (just preset in recent revisions) command line options for damn good quality based settings.

See Hydrogen Audio for more information than you could ever want.

Couple Issues.

[BrookHarty]

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.

Re:Ahh, yes but...

[decipher_saint]

"And we all know that lacks the warmth and depth of analog silence."

I hear ya, you just can't get the full range of nothing on a digital track...

i should add...

[sum.zero]

that any ashlee simpson song consisting of silence would be a vast improvement over those with noise.

sum.zero

Re:i should add...

[Ravenrage]

A moment of silence for his web server

Mike Watt

[fohat]

The gentleman from Ciccone Youth was Mike Watt. (not Batt as the op seems to say).

Re:the flipside

[OECD]

it is dumb to sell "songs" that are actually nothing more than silence. i think that is pretty ridiculous.

Not at all! Have you never been talking in a bar when the jukebox starts blaring? I would have loved to been able to buy a minute of silence!

There is a precedence for this...

[Sloppyjoes7]

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.)

It's not the same tune at all!

[raygundan]

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.

I guess the track could be worth a listen

[GMFTatsujin]

But on the other hand, I'm kind of getting sick of cover versions...

It's not the silence.

[jwcorder]

That's not the issue. The issue is he broke the DRM. If I take an empty box and put it in a safe in my house and leave the front door of my home standing wide open, then you walk into my house and crack the safe and take the box, you have committed multiple crimes.

Is it stupid? Yes. Is it illegal, most certainly.

DMCA does not have jurisdiction

[bill_mcgonigle]

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.

Re:Account Suspended

[omahajim]

Here's a mirror then:

You're Under Arrest......

[AKosygin]

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.

Re:the flipside

[Golias]

Actually, according to what the Amusement & Music Operators Association (AMOA) said in 1997, the most popular jukebox selection of all time is Patsy Cline's recording of "Crazy."

It's a cute story though. I could see why you would want it to be true.

The circumvention *device*

[tepples]

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).

Interpretations of "silence"

[bitslinger_42]

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.)

I've been asking for years...

[Anonymous Coward]

"How did we let the entertainment industry get away with this?"

I've been asking for 5 years on /. how the FBI became the enforcement arm for the RIAA and MPAA, and I always get modded as flamebait.

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.

John Cage's 4'33" isn't actually silence...OK?

[lxt]

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.

Re:John Cage's 4'33" isn't actually silence...OK?

[Larry Lightbulb]

It's for any instrument/s. The first performances were by David Tudor on piano and that seems to have stuck.

Not true

[bill_mcgonigle]

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 wondered how the various codecs handle silence. That seems like an easy optimization for the codec implementor. Here's what I did:

1. created a 10-second silence sound file in Sound Studio 44.1/16/stereo
   
2. exported it to AIFF
   
3. opened it in QuickTime player and re-saved it as AAC/128/best quality
   
4. opened that file and re-saved as AIFF
   
5. encoded that file to MP3/192/joint stereo/best quality in Audeon
   
6. opened that file in QuickTime Player and saved it to AIFF
   
7. 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.

Missing the point

[ecloud]

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).

The Law...

[NoseBag]

"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.

No Infringement

[John Hasler]

> 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.

Silence is golden

[jchap]

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)!