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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/rockandjazzmusic/3583315/You-cant-copyright-silence-theres-too-much-of-it-about.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture

• taneq 9y ago
  sigh That's what I get for assuming humanity is capable of being sensible about obvious things.
  • pimmen 9y ago
    I have low expectations of human behavior when it comes to IP. They have a chance to be exceeded in that case, and when they are, that feels good.
  • xg15 9y ago
    I agree this is pretty absurd but I could imagine that in this case the actual creative action (which I guess now can be copyrighted) might have been presenting silence as a musical score. So my guess is your turned off hi-fi system wouldn't infringe their copyright - but if you produced an audio file containing nothing but silence and marketed it as a song, you would be infringing. At least that's my try to find a spec of sanity in this. (IANAL)
    • taneq 9y ago
      So you're saying it's the difference between 0's and NaNs. I guess that makes sense.
    • TheCoelacanth 9y ago
      If you just produced an audio file containing silence and marketed it as a song you would be fine. The only way you would be found infringing is if they could somehow prove that you copied Cage's silence (or produced your silence using the "score" to Cage's silence) instead of independently composing and producing your own silence. Basically the only way that can happen is if you are dumb enough to actually admit that you copied Cage's silence.
• TillE 9y ago
  > Credited to Batt/Cage He was silly enough to explicitly give Cage a songwriting credit. That's the entire reason the case exists.