An Algorithm To Plagiarise Silence ---------------------------------- In 1952, John Cage composed "4'33''", now famous for its absence of deliberate musical noise. In 2002, Mike Batt was sued for copyright infringement by Cage's publisher for attributing "A One Minute Silence" to Batt/Cage. In 2008's "product placements", Johannes Kreidler registered with GEMA a short musical work containing 70200 samples in 33 seconds - an average of 470 microseconds per quotation (with no overlaps, as Kreidler claimed during LiWoLi 2009, Austria). Conceived in 2009, "An Algorithm To Plagiarise Silence" follows this line to its thoroughly illogical conclusion: averaging 23 microseconds per quotation, the algorithm copies snippets of silence from non-freely-redistributable audio files (such as a personal CD collection) into a new audio file which, while consisting purely of silence, cannot legally be shared.