"Happy Birthday" Hits Sour Notes When It Comes To Song's Free Use

vivaoporto writes: NPR reports that "Happy Birthday to You", one of the most recognized songs in the English language, is the subject of a class action complaint over the validity of its copyright. The publisher Warner/Chappell Music owns the copyright to the "Happy Birthday" song and anyone who wants to use the song must pay a licensing fee. How did Warner/Chappell get the rights? "This is where it gets complicated," says Jennifer Nelson. She is working on a documentary about the song and paid for the rights to use it. Now she's suing Warner/Chappell to get her money back, arguing it's part of the public domain. "I think it's going to set a precedent for this song and other songs that may be claimed to be under copyright, which aren't," says Newman. The Courthouse News Service have more information about the pending suit.

Comments

Re:A better solution

[hawguy]

Admittedly, I can be daft... so forgive me and please enlighten me...

EXPENSES:
>> Pay songwriter to compose
>> Record
>> Send postcards

INCOME:
>> it's free

BUSINESS MODEL:
>> Profit!

I'm confused how INCOME - EXPENSES = "PROFIT!" ?!?

Well sure, you might lose a little money on each one, but you can make it up in VOLUME!

Re:The obvious test case for ludicrous copyright

[Greyfox]

Damn straight! 200 years from now NPR will be playing classical rap music. The commentator will come on and be all like "That was Puff Daddy's 'Kill a Ho'... in D Minor. Coming up after the break will be Snoop Dog's 'All my Bitches,' in C. This was a very influential work at the time, in which Snoop Dog asserted that all the bitches were, in fact, his. Many other rappers at the time tried to get the bitches back, but their efforts were, ultimately, fruitless."

I predict that "Happy Birthday" will still be under copyright at the time.

There's already an alternative

[Pfhorrest]

There's already an alternate birthday song sun in every restaurant I've ever been to that had sang to people on their birthdays:

Happy happy birthday
From all of us to you!
We wish it was our birthday
So we could party too!

I always like to sing along under by breath a little parody I made up on the very topic of this article:

Happy happy birthday
From all of us to you!
We'd sing you "Happy Birthday"
But then we would get sued!

Re:The obvious test case for ludicrous copyright

[sconeu]

See, it's attitudes like this that hurt artists...

I mean, if we don't keep extending copyright, how can we encourage Elvis to keep singing new music?

P2P Killed Elvis!!!!

The real story is even worse

[SoftwareArtist]

This article isn't very accurate. The real story make the copyright claims even more absurd. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.... The melody and general idea of the lyrics date back at least to the mid-1800s. The song "Good Morning to All" was published in a song book in 1893, but the authors of that book had been singing it with their kindergarten class for many years, and it's not clear they were the original authors of it. The same melody with the words "Happy Birthday to You" was, it appears, an innovation of children who had been in their class, who started singing it at birthday parties. The tradition spread, and it appeared in print at least as early as 1912.

So what do they actually have a copyright on? Well, a piano arrangement was published in 1935. And years later someone came across that piano arrangement, found that a copyright had been registered on it, and (presumably being ignorant of the actual history of the song), thought they owned a copyright on the song and started trying to enforce it.