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Birthday Song's Copyright Leads To a Lawsuit For the Ages
New submitter chriscappuccio sends this excerpt from the NY Times:
"The song 'Happy Birthday to You' is widely credited for being the most performed song in the world. But one of its latest venues may be the federal courthouse in Manhattan, where the only parties may be the litigants to a new legal battle. The dispute stems from a lawsuit filed on Thursday by a filmmaker in New York who is seeking to have the court declare the popular ditty to be in the public domain, and to block a music company from claiming it owns the copyright to the song and charging licensing fees for its use. The filmmaker, Jennifer Nelson, was producing a documentary movie, tentatively titled 'Happy Birthday,' about the song, the lawsuit said. In one proposed scene, the song was to be performed."
Right? /sarcasm
I'm glad someone is pushing this topic (finally) and this is the perfect example. It's one thing to protect artists but the never-ending copyright extensions doing nothing of the sort. They ensure the media companies can generate recurring profits but, by and large, provide limit benefit to those actually responsible for the work. Oh wait...corporations are people now too.
Hopefully this is decided firmly, not on some silly technicality, and sets a precedent for other cases so common-use media can be pushed into public domain. Maybe someone will rule that copyright law is unfair, unconstitutional, or similar and FORCE our government to review this and move to a more rational policy.
You can get rich if you own a politician, but you have to be rich to buy one in the first place.
Bring back the original copyright terms:
The original length of copyright in the United States was 14 years, and it had to be explicitly applied for. If the author wished, he could apply for a second 14year monopoly grant, but after that the work entered the public domain, so it could be used and built upon by others.
How about "25 years without any extension, then it goes into the public domain". What these money-hungry Hollywood and publishing executives don't seem to realize is that everything DRM'ed will be lost in time, like tears in the rain.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
What I find funny is that the "strict constitutionalists" in our politics today have no problems with IP. People like Clarance Thomas talk about "original intent" but never have a problem with these matters. If there is one thing that has outstripped original intent of the constitution it's copyright. It wasn't put there for people to make money. It was put there to encourage people to be creative. Copyright in perpetuity does NOT encourage people to be creative.
I am referring to all of the lawyers that would argue either side of a case depending on which side offered them more money. These people are not driven by an inner sense of justice and making the world a better place, but simply following their own motivations of greed and rationalizing away any negative effects their greedy actions are causing society.
It's almost like it's a job for them to argue cases, not some quest to improve the world.