Music publisher claims copyright on silence

[ciacio]

Somebody posted this article on a mailing-list I follow:

http://www.cbc.ca/arts/story/2002/07/02/silencea020702.html



To make it more on-topic: you'd better avoid too much silence in your compositions.

c.

[bachus]

[elektro80]

Hilarious!

So I guess the artyfarty DJs out there will be in deep shit if they have a go at a loungy remix version of 4:33 ?

Hey, what if I suggest that we perform 4:33 together at a given time tomorrow? A group effort? We simply sit down and have a go at a decent reading of the piece? Will we be sued?

[seraph]

[Wout Blommers]

Well, the guy made a big mistake when naming Cage as composer.
He's using the name to sell an album as if a Cage composition is published.

Is it legal to publish my songs under the name of Lennon/McGartney? I don't think so.

Anyway, it's not the silence which has the John Cage copy rights, but the concept of 4'33" as a transposition of the minus 273 degrees Celsius into seconds. In such circumstances no sound is possible and there is absolute silence. Using it on an album dedicated to the planets and the univers is indeed a little bit to much John Cage...

BTW Cage proofed total silence is impossible in a concert room, the same as in the univers

Wout

[kijjaz]

For me, this piece of music 4'33" is telling us that we hear this music all the time
but sometimes we didn't pay attention to what's really happening.
in both our brains and outside.

and the way a performer can show the audiences that there're lots of noises around that you might missed while only focusing too much on anything.

if we don't focus too much, instead suck anything around that's happening in the preset..
we'll appreciated the sounds we considered 'noises' just like how we appreciated a great work of art or the beauty of nature.

by this, every song and recording seems like 4'33" to me -_-"

[v-un-v]

Mike Batt??? What he of the Wombles fame??

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[bachus]

[Wout Blommers]

[Kassen]

[Wout Blommers]

Well, first of all...
When Lennon is fed in a spell-checker, it always ask if I mean Lenin...

Secondly, there once was a four man band called 'Love and Awareness' and was presented over the radio as 'the new Beatles album', which contains a couple of songs in the Beatles style, just like outtakes. The musicians weren't bad at all, only they had to be presented as 'the new Beatles with an album', instead of a 'new album by the Beatles'. Snappie?

If there's any copy rights, it surely is a name! I can't sign my songs as made by L van Beethoven, even when it's all original mine.

Vermegeren knows you can't sell paintings signed by Johannes Vermeer to the Germans He had the choice to proof he was a fraud instead of a collaborator to the nazi's.

Wout

[Kassen]

No.

You can't copyright names, at least not your own name because it's not your own creative work. If you invent a new name for your child, you might be able to claim copyright on that. The problem there is that there is supposed to be a finite and known set of permissable names (at least here) and that would mean that anything that would stick as a name there won't be new and so won't be your copyright.

I think you lose copyrtight if you don't defend it so you can create a orignal name for your child but then you might have to sue him/her as soon as she starts using it to refer to him/hertself. Overall it seems quite impractical to use creative works for names of people.

You might be able to TRADEMARK a name within a certain field. I don't think L von Beethoven was trademarked so you can use that. What you *can't* do is claim the manuscript you made yourself was by a classical composer and sell it since that's fraud, it's not copyright infringement nor is it a violation of a trademark.

IANAL.

[kkissinger]

To claim copyright infringement on silence is preposterous.

I don't see how someone's silent track deprives Cage's or anyone else's publishers of their rightful royalties.

Cage's publishers are, quite literally, trying to get something for nothing.

[Antimon]

[Wout Blommers]

The most difficult thing on the InterNet: NAMES!
Using a nick name ables you to divide the written and the person. I think a pseudonyme is a to good word for it

BTW everybody can use the name von Beethoven, because the famous composer has a Dutch name: van Beethoven and his grandfather was the last in line of his family who was born in Mechelen, Belgium, before his son moved to Bonn, where little Ludwig was born.

But being on topic again...
The name is very important in copy right! Copy right consist of the artifact and the author, known by his name, which is the most important part of his identity (besides birth date and place of birth). So never use the name of somebody else, because it gets you in trouble

Your name is an essential part of copy right.

Wout

[Wout Blommers]

[Wout Blommers]

[v-un-v]

[bbinkovitz]

but just think how hard it must be to have the job of john cage's publishing representative!

[Stanley Pain]

[Wout Blommers]

It isn't that hard to understand...

Well, face it! Everybody who writes my name as composer of a piece of music underneath his/her work is suggesting I was at least a co-writter. Surely I will ask some of the royalties. How stupid can somebody be Well, at least the author of the article, because he/her doesn't understand the situation. It's not about 4'33'' and silence. To give somebody copy-rights it will be collected, won't it?

Nah...
It was done to sell the album better...

Wout

[kkissinger]

Wout,

You make a good point -- that the motive was to capitalize on Cage's name and reputation rather than to plagurize his silent composition.

[bbinkovitz]

[kijjaz]

For me, silence has no copyright..
Because silence can be everywhere everytime and everyone's and no-one's..

But the Cage's copyrighted work (4'33") itself is not silence..
but the act of intentionally playing nothing.

So it's not about that pure silence at all.

[Wout Blommers]