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Sometimes parties pay what seems like a lot of money to settle dubious claims because it's cheaper and less time-consuming than fighting them. That can be completely rational. But paying £100,000 for infringing one minute of silence is just ridiculous.

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Well, he sold a lot of copies of that one minute of silence, so I think the real question is whether it was copyrightable. I mean, if the answer is "yes", then the following question is what reason there is to suspect that the government that made it copyrightable is anything more than a criminal racket.

> so I think the real question is whether it was copyrightable.

Whether a particular thing is copyrightable or not is a question of law and fact. The government will accept your $25 for a copyright registration on anything you submit, but they don’t check if it’s copyrightable or not, if you own it or not, etc. So, no one knows for sure whether that one minute of silence is copyrightable or not until someone challenges it in court. Until then, all we can say is probably not, based on prior cases.

The liner notes included an attribution to John Cage, making the case somewhat more complicated.

He said it was to "Clint Cage", a "registered pseudonym" for himself, but obviously he was paying homage to John Cage.

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