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"Happy Birthday" Public Domain After All?
New submitter jazzdude00021 writes: No song has had as contentious of copyright history as "Happy Birthday." The song is nearly ubiquitous at birthday parties in the USA, and even has several translations with the same tune. Due to copyrights held by Warner Music, public performances have historically commanded royalty fees. However, a new lawsuit has been brought to prove that "Happy Birthday" is, and always has been, in the public domain.The discovery phase for this lawsuit ended on July, 11 2014, yet this past week new evidence surfaced from Warner Music that may substantiate the claim that the lyrics were in the public domain long before the copyright laws changed in 1927.
Disney invented Mickey and still actively uses the character in the company's productions. It's fair that Disney retains copyright to Mickey Mouse.
Read about this like 5 days ago. Anything else you guys want to present as "news". Perhaps the death of Jimmy Hendrix or that new Godfather II movie?
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
And that's exactly where the current form of copyright not only fails to address its original purpose but actually works against its purpose.
The purpose was to give people an incentive to create works of art by giving them an monetary incentive to do so. If you can monopolize something great for a time (instead of fearing that whatever you create immediately being copied by anyone, rendering your work worthless), you have an incentive to create something great and reap the rewards of your work. That's fine.
Now, last thing I heard about "happy birthday" was that it makes 5 grand a DAY for Warner. Now, imagine you made "happy birthday". And got 5 grand a day from it. Where the fuck is your incentive to EVER create anything again? 5 grand a day? Fuck, I couldn't be assed to do anything but sit there and rake in the money for the rest of my life. Why bother work ever again if you already get more money than you can sensibly spend without doing anything?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Neither is it fair that Disney stole Osamu Tezuka's Kimba for use in The Lion King.
The Constitutional requirement is: (1) to authors and inventors, (2) for a limited time, (3) in order to promote progress in the sciences and arts.
It is impossible that extending the copyright term for works of a fifty-year-dead author can encourage him to produce more work. Nor is the resulting term "limited" in either in mathematical or human terms. And the current Mickey Mouse "copyright owners" are certainly NOT that author nor inventor.
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