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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 defends "Steamboat Willie" from about the same time frame to protect Mickey Mouse from falling into the public domain. "Happy Birthday" is from about the same time. This era is kept out of the public domain by repeated copyright law changes, the most recent being the DMCA which extended the time works stay copyrighted.
I'm guessing Time Warner is going to be giving all those royalties back?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
That's the probem with copyright long after the creator is dead. You can't get them to testify under oath and so bogus copyrights like this are inevitable.
Here Warner had evidence that the lyrics predated their claim from other sources, and and the music they never made a clim on, so what they did was claim copyright on the lyrics based a piano arangement.
They would have known their claim was false because so many claims have been made about this copyright they would have examined it to protect their multi-million investment, so they likely acted to deceive.
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
Maybe finally, there is a noticeable public backlash against indefinite copyright, and they are doing this to pacify that. The trick usually works.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
From TFA comments:
If people sing it in a different key, is that copyright infringement?
Yes. (At least in Australia.)
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
Have gnu, will travel.
They're just claiming the song book wasn't officially licensed. Without proof that it was it's the copyright holders word against theirs, and judges in America always, always side with property rights.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
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.
"My opinions are my own, and I've got *lots* of them!"
Could corporations who paid for licenses for the so-called rights to use the song sue Warner Music to get (some) of their money back?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
To say the "new evidence surfaced from Warner Music" is rather misleading. The plaintiffs independently found the evidence; what they got from Warner had the evidence "blurred out". Here's the summary from TFA:
Warner, of course, denies that conclusion. rsilvergun may be right, but the date of the songbook relative to the date of the "copyright" and of the changes to copyright law would seem to weaken Warner's argument fatally.
Sorry bub, I don't know the other poster. Copyright seems to be like the "grave robber's code: once a wealthy person passes away, we're gonna take all his treasure and distribute it amongst overselves." Give me one good reason why you ethically deserve to get the copyrighted work for free?
Legal laws are based on fairness, equality and yes, ethics. So let's have the ethical reason then.
Give me one good reason why you ethically deserve to get the copyrighted work for free?
Because media is culture. And without a common culture, society dies. Media is the glue that holds society together. Shared music and shared images let people relate to each other in ways that are difficult or impossible to achieve in any other fashion. And I have the right to share media. Today, I have the right to play an MP3 that a friend gave me. Historically, I had the right to play a tune on my own instrument that I'd heard once the week before. I have the inherent right to reproduce what is mine and to reproduce what I remember in my own brain. Both. This is morally and actually true. This was also legally true for all of the thousands of years of human history except the past hundred. Copyright is a perversion of the natural order of things.
And yes, that MP3 is mine. It's on my storage device, not yours, protected by my password, not yours, and not some high-fallutin' Artist-King who is owed all things for all eternity. It's mine.
Your argumentation is self-contradictory and bizarre. Grave-robbers? Copyright is like the Pharaoh's code. "Once the wealthy god-king passes away, he's going to take all of his treasure, including his still-living favored servants, and bury them in a gigantic tomb for all of eternity, never to see the light of day again." That's what copyright is. Guess how that worked out for the pharaohs? That's right, empty graves. The dead have no rights, least of all the wealthy dead. The dead, even the venerated dead, will be eaten. Such is the way of things.
The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out,
The worms play pinochle on your snout...
That's a song. I was singing it while I intentionally misquoted it for affect, creating a derivative work. Think I should have to pay a royalty? Twice? Once for writing it down and once for singing it? Think every child who sings it in the school yard should have to pay a $0.0000006 royalty, automatically mediated by their smartphone?
Fuck you, culture thief.
Remember a few days ago, The UK proposed a 10 year copyright violation imprisonment? Next up, what if the "rights" holders for "Happy Birthday" decide to go all RIAA and sue everyone they can. All you have to do is open up Facebook or Instagram, and bam, thousands of families can be taken straight to prison for ten years. That'll teach them.
God spoke to me
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
- In Soviet Korea, only old people loose all their bases to Natalie Portman's petrified hot grits overlords.
The artist created the work so he owns it just like you own your body and mind, no one else does.
By your logic, every artist should have the right to erase the memories of every person that ever heard one of their songs, because there is a copy of the song in those peoples' brains. Is that what you are asserting? That the songwriter owns my brain because his song is in it?
Next think you know, you'll be asking your neighbors to help pay for your porch light, because it reaches their yards and they are using your light.
Just because to AGREE to steal/seize someone's work after a set amount of time, does not absolve you from theft.
So ... you are claiming copyright expiration is a seizure. How does that happen? Do jack-booted thugs show up at your house to take it away from you? No - you still have it. In fact, you can still sell copies. But you can no longer decide that the 2 dozen people that already have copies of your work cannot make more copies. Now there are 25 copies. Did you lose anything? NO. In fact, you were already paid by 24 people that were stupid enough to think a copy of your crap is worth paying for.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Thank you for staying on-topic.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Here's a copy published in 1911 (words only, but it makes it clear that this song well predates the 1935 date the copyright claimants are pegging their millions on).
Title: The Elementary Worker and His Work
Author: Alice Jacobs, et al
Year: 1911
https://books.google.com/books...
We still are paying for Mozart's music if you want to listen to it on CD or iTunes. People don't listen to sheet music, you have to play that on the piano in a competent manner for people to enjoy it. So instead of paying tens or hundreds of dollars to the pianist or some publisher, why can't we pay Mozart's heirs directly since they are more deserving than some random pianist/publisher?
I'm pretty sure, other distributors of the art do keep backup copies. If Facebook can save some stupid photo of some ordinary guy, I'm sure someone else can save a copy of the work of art.
That's their choice to sell. But I'm sure once the artists are famous enough, they will retain rights to their works and buy the services offered by these corporations instead of selling them their works for a fixed price. You can already sell your music on iTunes and other digital stores for 70% cut of the revenue.
why can't we pay Mozart's heirs directly since they are more deserving than some random pianist/publisher?
You've got to be F-ing kidding me. My grandfather was an officer in the army who was decorated for bravery. Does this mean that soldiers should salute me when they see me on the street? Should I be eligible for veteran's benefits?
Property inheritance is one thing, because you can say that people should be able to dictate what happens their possessions after their death. But copyright is not a possession. It is a contract between the public and the creator of an original work. And why the hell should the contract suddenly apply to a musician's children if he dies? Because if that logic holds, I should now be party to the contract between the military and my grandfather that involves his veteran's benefits.
Musicians who play Mozart today are a hundred billion times more deserving of payment then Mozart's descendants. They at least did something related to the work while Mozart's descendants (to the best of my knowledge) have done jack shit.
Piffle.
Copyright is utilitarian from top to bottom.
Copyright is only tolerable if it is better for society than not having it. One specific implementation of copyright is better than another if it provides a greater benefit for the public than the alternative.
It's no more based on fairness than a zoning regulation requiring a certain setback from the street.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Actually, the Copyright Act was replaced entirely in 1976 (becoming effective in 1978), and has been amended some, yet in substantial ways, since then. Noises are being made about a new Copyright Act coming along in the near future.
The person who wrote the summary is a bit confused. What happened is that the Warner claim was based on a copy published in 1935. Evidence was discovered of a copy that was published in 1927. That's not terribly interesting, but a copy published in 1922 has also come to light. That is interesting, because the cutoff for copyright on published works is 1923. (Due to the duration of copyright prior to the effective date of the 1976 Act, which retroactively lengthened the term of copyrights that were still in force)
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
And where my friend did the artist get the vocabulary, the musical scale and the tropes on which his works are based? Culture is a shared resource. You cannot create in a cultural vaccuum devoid of the works created by other people.
I don't deserve to get the copyrighted work for free, while it's under copyright. However, copyright is an artificial restriction on what I can do with something I bought, and should not be indefinitely prolonged.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Why? Mozart's heirs didn't write Mozart's music. I didn't write Mozart's music. We're equal on that score.
For practical purposes, it makes sense for a copyright to not expire on the artist's death, since that would reduce the incentive for old or sick people to create, but there's nothing ethically mandatory about it.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes