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Should I get a license to sing "Happy Birthday to You" from Warner Chappell? I guess I will, just to be safe...

Name of the Client: me
Description of the Presentation: birthday party
Who will view the presentation? friends and family
How many people will be attending the presentation? 20
What is the number of locations where the presentation will take place? 1
How many copies will be made? 25
Will any copies be sold? No
Please give a detailed description, including timing(s), of how the song will be used in the presentation: The song will be sung once before I blow out the candles on my birthday cake. There will be a camcorder set up and the recording will be sent to everybody at the party and some people who could not attend.
Are you going to license an original master recording or are you going to re-record the song? Rerecording
Will you be altering the Song's lyrics in any way: Yes
If yes, please type new lyrics.
Happy Birthday To You
Happy Birthday To You
Happy Birthday Dear RockMFR
Happy Birthday To You
And Many More
On Channel 4
And Scooby Doo
On Channel 2
And Frankenstein
On Channel 9
General Comments: no gifts, please

*submits*

Fee: $0.00

:)

Congratulations: You have just ruined slashdot with a lawsuit from Warner Chappell (Happy Birthday is Copyrighted Music.... I'm not kidding... ):

http://www.warnerchappell.com/wcm_2/song_search/song_detail/songview_2.jsp?esongId=126621000&view=fulllyrics

Ahem, Warner/Chappel to sue Google.

Guess what, you can find the full lyrics for lots of songs right on the Warner/Chappell website.

You may not like my taste in music, but you have to admit that you can get the full lyrics for songs right from the horses mouth - with no payment whatsoever! They provide it all there in unencrypted,(sort of) easily searchable format right on the web.

I wonder if their free provision of the lyrics on the web creates any sort of legal issues if they wanted to enforce any sort of laws against ordinary consumers.

If you do it yourself, it's yours.

Oh really? What if some music publisher with $100 billion of equity sues you on grounds that you "accidentally copied" a song written by one of the publisher's songwriters? George Harrison lost such a lawsuit. How, before publishing a song, can a performer-songwriter make sure that the song is original?

A MUCH better system to prevent infringement-by-performance would be to record the date and registered owner of the recording device

I see your point here. But I'm still curious as to how a songwriter can prevent infringement-by-songwriting. In fact, I feel afraid to publish songs that I have written for precisely that reason, because I don't have the $$$ to defend myself against a derivative-work lawsuit brought by Warner Chappell Music's army of retained lawyers.

The record companies have the rights to the sheet music I would guess

That's true if the record company and the music publisher are owned by the same conglomerate, such as Warner Bros. Records and Warner Chappell Music (owner of "happy birthday to you") both owned by Warner Communications, a unit of AOL Time Warner Inc.

but they must not have any ownership if I listen to the radio and transcribe it myself.

No matter how you hear a copyrighted musical work, it's still copyrighted. Unlike with computer program copyright, there's no way to "clean-room reverse engineer" around music copyright. Even if you only unconsciously plagiarize a copyrighted musical work, you're still liable under USA copyright law.

Here's happy birthday [...]

Busted. That's a derivative work of a copyrighted song published by AOL. Go to jail, go directly to jail, do not pass go, do not collect $200.

The idea that the 'music publishing industry' is somehow seperate from the 'recording industry' is patently absurd (ok, it might be patently pending absurd ;).