Copyright Battle Over Nothing 479
An Anonymous Coward writes: "In this story reported at The Independent is "one of the more curious copyright disputes of modern times." It appears that the key question is "which part of the silence was stolen." If only this was April First. This is a lawsuit suing over the sound of nothing, no sound, silence, nada, zilch, bupkiss.
Would this be... (Score:2, Insightful)
lawsuit ?? (Score:4, Insightful)
its 4 paragraphs and only says "I've received a letter on behalf of John Cage's music publishers. I was in hysterics when I read their letter."
and the guy credited them anyways.....
fun fun
Okay.. (Score:2, Insightful)
What i wonder is why they're going after this guy, but not, say, Boards of Canada. Their "Geogaddi" album from the end of last year ended with a track called "Magic Window" that is 1:47 of silence. Or Korn, for that matter. "Follow the Leader" began with 13 tracks containing 4 seconds of silence.
Perhaps it's because of just intent-- look at it this way. Magic Window (BoC) was there to make the album more inscrutable, and to bump the running time of the album up to 66:06 (Boards of Canada has been on a kick lately of littering references to Satan and David Koresh in their albums). The Korn album, meanwhile, had the silence there because they wanted to be "edgy", because they want to be like Nine Inch Nails and Tool (the "broken" EP contained a bunch of 1-second silent tracks between tracks 6 and 97, so that the two hidden tracks would be 98 and 99 respectively; Korn's "undertow" album pulled a similar trick, but it resulted in the hidden track being at 69), and because they hate their listeners (this should be apparent if you listen to the rest of the album).
The Mike Batt track, meanwhile, is there solely for ironic value-- the same reason for the existence of 4:33. In that way, the Mike Batt track is a rip-off of the idea of 4:33 in a way that the others are not. I guess the idea is that silence can say a lot, and all those other cases were saying something different than 4:33 was. The Batt track, meanwhile, was saying the same thing.
Anyway, i'm certain i've heard of many more instances of silent songs being tossed onto albums. The CD version of Absolute Elsewhere [everything2.com], for existence. So even were the copyright valid, wouldn't they have no legal leg to stand on, since they've in the past failed to defend this copyright? (Is that just an urban legend? Maybe we should come up with a new word for urban legends that are born and propigated via slashdot. "Slashdot Myth"? Nah, that sounds silly.)
Maybe this case is just because he credited Cage in the liner notes? If so, he should still be safe, since that would be satire.
I don't know. I can't honestly help but wonder if the estate of John Cage isn't pulling this as some kind of massive, destructive practical joke / performance art piece. It wouldn't be that far out of character; Cage was, after all, the man who did a live performance of Vexations [everything2.com].
(Well, OK, or this is a silly record company thing by nonsentient biological humans who are aware of no concepts other than profit motive. But that's such a dull explanation!)
--super ugly ultraman
Re:Freedom of Speech replaced... (Score:2, Insightful)
John Cage's 4'33" (Score:5, Insightful)
With this in mind, I wonder what direction the legal case should take...
John Cage and 4'33" (Score:5, Insightful)
John Cage's piece, 4'33", was actually very clever and quite a novel idea for its time.
One of the themes of his work is to let sounds be themselves. To that end, he composed a piece which involved a pianist holding his hands over a piano keyboard for 4 minutes and 33 seconds. The music was not silence, but rather the sound of the audience slowly realising to what was going on.
As such, this piece can never really be recorded (unless you actually record an audience listening to it, and even then, it's not the same thing; once the sound is recorded, it is no longer the same kind of performance), and claiming that a recording of silence is even close to being the same thing as 4'33" is ludicrous.
Mike Batt's problem is crediting Cage on the album. Yes, he did it for a laugh, but by doing so, did he inadvertantly claim legal liability?
Personally, I think John Cage would have gotten a real kick out of the whole proceedings. It would have appealed to his sense of whimsy.
Devil's Advocate (Score:5, Insightful)
This sounds very silly, but maybe there is a valid point to be made. Mike Batt has a silent track on his album, apparently in something of an homage to avant-garde, experimentalist composer John Cage. To reinforce the connection he even co-credits Cage on the track (but presumably isn't giving out any royalties).
If he simply left a minute of silence on his album (without the credit) then I'd definitely think that there's nothing there. However, by crediting Cage (even as a joke or a tribute) he has opened himself up to charges of copyright infringement and/or misrepresentation.
Without even "listening", one would get the impression (from his liner notes) that his work either draws from Cage, or is co-authored by him. This goes beyond copyright - for instance, even if Mickey Mouse became public domain, no one using should ever be allowed to pretend to be either Disney or to be authorized by Disney (without their permission).
IANAL, but to me there are two valid reasons for IP laws. The first is to encourage dissemination of ideas by rewarding creativity. This is the one that is generally criticized, since the method of reward (monopoly etc.) is somewhat arbitrary and frequently abused. The other reason for IP protection is to prevent misrepresentation. This concept should always be upheld, even regardless of whether a copyright, patent, or trademark has expired.
I appreciate the subtle satire achieved by crediting Cage, but in this case it leaves the potential for confusion and the impression that Cage has contributed to and is getting reimbursed for the work. The lawyers might not agree, but Cage should either pay up, remove the credit only, or (my preferred choice) clearly identify the work (including the credit, which has artistic merit) as a non-derivative tribute/satire.
PS. Sorry about the pun's (unintentional, honest).
Re:My copyright... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I'll right your copy! (Score:2, Insightful)
Someone posts a reasonably funny joke in a few lines of C and 20 people rip on him for such highly relevant issues as whether the joke was written in portable ANSI C and whether it checked return values.
The irony is, you look at any "Free Unix" applications source, and it's so full of trivial errors it's not even funny, but the same people are the first to jump on others' code as if they had been crowned Lord High Protectorate of the Kingdom of Kernighan and Ritchie.
I mean, fucking hell, it's a joke about zeroing out a large array and writing it to a file, does the code to do this really need to be portable? Do you not understand the joke unless it comes with a GNU LICENSING document and follows the GNU indentation and coding standards? Does the joke lose its meaning entirely because it didn't return a value to the host OS?
I'm recently moving from programmer to mathematician, and do you know what I see as the biggest difference between programmers and mathematicians? Imagination. It's so refreshing not to be surrounded by code monkeys whose ability lies in reading a book, and parroting out the instructions held within to produce the n'th "multi-tiered thin-client solution" or "Office replacement", where any attempts at overall creativity in solving a problem will surely be stifled in favour of checking that the in-house standards for variable naming are followed.
PS To the later "did you mean 'I'll Write Your Copy'?" poster, there was a joke in the title, as in COPY - RIGHT, RIGHT your COPY. Jesus fucking Christ, how hard is it?
Many different kinds of silence... (Score:1, Insightful)
basically stillness. Various stillnesses sound the same to the casual observer but mean quite a lot to the more in depth listener.
For example, consider the stillness of your child as she sleeps silently in a crib.
or the silence of the crowd as the basketball player gets set to shoot the game winning free throw. Or golfer sink the putt if basketball gym doesn't seem silent enough for you.
Or the silence in your heart when you see your lover kissing another.
They may all sound the same on tape, but each is quite unique.
not to mention timing and key. Silence in c major, silence in 2/2 time, 4/4 time.
fun topic. thanks.
So easy you could represent yourself... (Score:2, Insightful)