I agree. I'm always amazed when a compression protocol omits a "do nothing" option, or doesn't use that as its base reference, progressively moving away from it as it makes sacrifices to save space (computing overhead for lossless, quality for lossy). Is it even possible to encode a lossless MP3 of John Cage's 4′33″?
A particular performance of it, probably not. The space of possible lossless MP3s is quite tiny and I suspect consists of pure or close to pure tones, not the more complex spectra you get for the coughs and page turning you usually hear is 4'33".
