[Commons-law] Copywriting silence

Thu Sep 5 12:01:04 IST 2002

Dear Sudhir

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----Original Message-----
From: commons-law-admin at sarai.net [mailto:commons-law-admin at sarai.net]On
Behalf Of Rana Dasgupta
Sent: Wednesday, September 04, 2002 6:18 PM
To: commons-law at sarai.net
Subject: [Commons-law] Copywriting silence

Maybe some of you saw this story - a composer who put
a one-minute silent track on his CD was served a local
notice for infringement of the copyright of John
Cage's 4'33" - a silent work of that length.

Two articles follow.  For those that are interested
I've pasted at the end some thoughts by Paul Miller
(DJ Spooky) about the significance of Cage's silent
works.

http://www.chartattack.com/damn/2002/07/0404.cfm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/music/2133426.stm
http://amsterdam.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0207/msg00138.html

Loose Ends: Did John Cage Invent Silence?
Thursday July 04, 2002 @ 04:30 PM
By: ChartAttack.com Staff

Music copyright infringement can be a fairly tricky
thing. Some cases, like the fiasco over the similarity
between Huey Lewis' "I Want A New Drug" and the
Ghostbusters theme, are reasonable. Others are a
little more iffy. For instance, can anyone own a
copyright on the sound of silence?

According to the estate of late avant-garde composer
John Cage, yes. Cage, as you may remember, perplexed
an audience decades ago with a "composition" called
"4'33," which featured him sitting in front of a
piano, in complete silence, for exactly four minutes
and 33 seconds. Now, a classical composer by the name
of Mike Batt has put a track called "One Minute's
Silence" (which is exactly that) on an album by his
protegees, The Planets. According to the British
newspaper, The Independent, John Cage's people have
served him with a legal document, claiming copyright
infringement.

And what does Batt have to say about it? "My Silence
is original silence, not a quotation from his
silence." Fair enough.

'Silent works' do battle

Wombles creator Mike Batt has been accused of
infringing the copyright of American minimalist
composer John Cage, after placing a one-minute silence
on his latest CD - and saying it was a Mike Batt
composition.

It's a gentlemanly dispute - but there is money
involved

On Wednesday morning Batt's A Minute's Silence was
played alongside Cage's famous 1952 work 4'33", which
consists of four minutes and 33 seconds of silence, at
Baden Powell House in central London.

Cage's publisher Peters Edition and Batt hoped it
would clarify the differences between the works.

Marc Dooley, who performed 4'33" on clarinet, told BBC
News Online that he felt he "performed it properly".

"I did do a run through beforehand, to make sure I
knew what the experience was like.

"Four-and-a-half minutes is quite a long time to be
performing like that - or not performing," he said.

But he added that, despite discussions after the works
had been played, the dispute was still unresolved.

Amusement

Batt, who conducted A Minute's Silence on Wednesday,
told BBC Radio 4's Front Row the idea of the track was
to separate some acoustic arrangements from rockier
material on the CD Classical Graffiti by his group The
Planets.

"I thought for my own amusement it would be funny to
call it something so I called it A Minute's Silence
and credited it as track 13 and put my name as
Batt/Cage, as a tongue-in-cheek dig at the John Cage
piece," he said.

After the record was released, he was contacted by
Peters Edition who said he had infringed its copyright
- and Cage's publisher was claiming a quarter of the
royalties from the track.

The Mechanical Copyright Protection Society (MCPS) has
so far supported the American composer's case -
because, it says, the track was originally registered
in his name.

Pseudonym

"When the record company registered the track with the
MCPS it was credited to Mike Batt and John Cage, so
royalties would have been due to John Cage," a
spokesman told BBC News Online.

"Only since has he come back to us and asked us to
re-register it as Clint Cage, his pseudonym."

The argument will be there is no work because there
are no notes

Batt is adamant that his silence is an original work:
"I certainly wasn't quoting his silence. I claim my
silence is original silence," he told Front Row.

In any case, under English law it is unlikely the
copyright in Cage's could be protected as it involves
no actual notes, according to a music industry lawyer.

Lawyer Duncan Lamont told Front Row the question was
"Is it a work?"

"Has it been written down, is it a literary, artistic
or dramatic work? The argument will be there is no
work because there are no notes."

Mr Lamont added that Batt's defence that the track is
a joke is not a defence in English law, though the
defence of parody would be a different matter.

Batt said that so far the argument had not become too
serious - but this could change.

"This is not an angry dispute - it's a gentlemanly
dispute. But there is money involved," he said.

I think about how John Cage used to just stare at the
piano in his silence pieces. The instrument was a
jumping off point -
an interface that had so many routes available, that
the infinity of
possibility led to chance operations - it's stuff like
that that II'm
interested in these days - "Imaginary Landscape" and
other pieces
like that create open interpretations of what the
compositional
process is all about... Cage wanted to highlight that
meditational
aspect of the creative act.

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