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"Happy Birthday To You" Now Public Domain
New submitter Duckman5 writes: As mentioned on multiple occasions, the popular song "Happy Birthday To You" has recently been the subject of a lawsuit between a couple of documentary filmmakers and Warner/Chappell Music. The judge in the case, George H. King, has finally issued his ruling and according to NPR and the LA Times, that song is finally in the public domain. Warner is still apparently "considering our options," so this may not be the end of it, but it seems to be a turn in the right direction. Also at the Washington Post, among many others.
A judge in the USA has ruled in favour of the obvious? Has someone contacted the devil yet?
Kevin Smith can let Ben Affleck sing it all he wants now royalty free.
So does this mean the the generic tune/sheet music is now is the public domain, and anyone can sing it. But all performances of the song are still owned by the original authors? I still cannot go and download any version of this song that the author has not explicitly released to the public for free?
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
It should be public domain due to how old it is, not that Warner doesn't have a valid copyright.
THE SOFTWARE, IT NO WORKY!!!
The reading skills of the submitter is unbelievable. His link titled "public domain" supports the opposite:
The judge didn't rule that that song is public domain now. It was just ruled that Warner/Chappell Music is not the copyright holder as they claimed to be. There still could be a copyright owner. The song has not reached the age to be public domain yet.
No, they found that it was NEVER under copyright, the claimed copyright was to a piano arrangement of it, NOT the music NOT the lyrics which were both pre-existing.
It shows the big problem of copyright longer than people lives, because this could have been settled decades ago if the original people who signed the contracts were there for deposition!
Dead people can't testify in court, and copyright no longer requires registration, so there is no way to verify the copyright state of works of long dead people. A lot of who you *think* owns the copyright sold it long ago, and the means to even verify the signatures on the contracts becomes debatable.
Incorrect.
The defense found a songbook from before 1925 with the music published and without a (C) mark. That makes it public domain. Whether judge ruled on that has no bearing that it's still a fact.
One of the options we are currently considering is having the artist $popular_with_youth_today rework the song and pimp the reworked version. Sing the new popular version. We dare you. --Warner/Chappell Music
Copyright law is a ridiculous monster these days. All effort and energy wasted in this case is bewildering. People spent many years studying this case to free this one song, to prove that it isn’t “owned” by anyone. This is ridiculous, a hundred years after who wrote the melody died. We are holding our culture, our art, at ransom in the hands of faceless greedy corporate entities, for the benefit of nobody. Copyright was originally meant to encourage more art to be created, not this.
This is a misreport. The judge didn't say that the Happy Birthday song was in the public domain. What he said was that the folks who claimed to own it failed to prove that they owned it. No one could produce an evidence trail substantiating that the folks who filed for copyright in the 1930s actually owned it. That makes the claimed copyright invalid but it doesn't preclude the existence of a copyright.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
There goes my side job of writing birthday jingles for chain restaurants. :(
Happy Birthday to You!
and this song is free too!
Warner Bro-thers can Bite me!
This one is G N U !
Apparently the tune is already public domain with or without the court decision, according to the LA Times
So an instrumental performance (whistling or humming) or a parody (per fair use rights) should be in the clear.
That's a legal argument that the plaintiffs made. The judge denied that one.
Since the publisher was not the copyright holder, and only the licensee, it's unlikely that he had the right to put it in the public domain. It's not even certain that Summy Co. had the right to it at that point in order to license it in the first place.
TFA:
"Robert Brauneis, a George Washington University law professor who has extensively researched the copyright history of the song, says the ruling does not explicitly place "Happy Birthday To You" in the public domain."
While Warner/Chapple says they are not considering an appeal, they say "we are reading the long opinion to see what our options are." [paraphrase] So they may decide to appeal after all. Then there is the other issue: repayment of royalties already received, going back decades. That may indeed trigger an appeal of the ruling, to hold off that fiscal event. At two million a year for decades, the cost of the appeal starts to look cheap...
Happy, Happy Birthday
From the Chili's crew
We wish it was our birthday
So we can party too, hey!
I've noticed servers singing actual "Happy Birthday to You" sporadically over the last few months.
Happy happy birthday
we hope we won't get sued
just for wishing happy birthday
to a generous tipper like you!©
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I'm sorry but I read your submission and it quotes the article saying "the world’s most popular song belongs to...the world." What other interpretation is there besides that meaning it's public domain? As the AC below (and the articles) state, the song was published in 1922 without a notice of copyright. Under the laws governing copyright at the time, that means that they could not assert copyright on the Happy Birthday words. It's public domain.
I guess, theoretically, some cockroach could crawl out of the woodwork tomorrow and say "but look, my great grandaddy published the words WITH the copyright statement in 1921! I own the words!" Yes, it's possible, but not particularly likely. The only group to ever assert copyright on it was Warner and the chain of holders before they finally purchased it. At this point it might as well be over.
And it only took how many decades to sort this shit out?
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
As in birthday cake..
That's a legal argument that the plaintiffs made. The judge denied that one.
That's correct, the judge denied the argument. However, he argued the argument is denied because the plaintiffs didn't provide evidence that the publication of
Happy Birthday in The Everyday Song Book in 1922 was authorized.
He didn't argue that it was denied because the publication was only done by a licensee, like you say.
If you published an authorized work under the Copyright Act of 1909, and missed a copyright mark, the work would become public domain. From the ruling (some quotes removed):
Under the Copyright Act of 1909, one secured a federal copyright by publishing a
work with proper notice. Before such publication, the work was protected by common
law copyright. If the work was published without notice, two things happened: the
author (1) failed to obtain a federal copyright and (2) lost the common law copyright as
well.
General publication, which would cause a forfeiture, occurs “when, by consent of
the copyright owner, the original or tangible copies of a work are sold, leased, loaned,
given away, or otherwise made available to the general public, or when an authorized
offer is made to dispose of the work in any such manner, even if a sale or other such
disposition does not in fact occur.” 1 Nimmer 4.03. By contrast, a limited publication,
which does not cause a forfeiture, is when “tangible copies of the work are distributed
both (1) to a ‘definitely selected group,’ and (2) for a limited purpose, without the right of
further reproduction, distribution or sale.” Acad. of Motion Picture Arts & Scis., 944 F.2d
at 1452. Moreover, “mere performance or exhibition of a work does not constitute a
[general] publication of that work.” Am. Vitagraph, Inc. v. Levy, 659 F.2d 1023, 1027
(9th Cir. 1981).
The judge even said that this would apply for the 1922 publication:
If the [1922] publication was authorized, that could
make it a general publication (without proper copyright notice), divesting the Hill sisters
of their common law copyright.
But later on, he sais:
As Defendants [Time Warner] point out, there is no direct evidence
that the Hill sisters had authorized Summy Co. to grant permission for the publication of
the lyrics in The Everyday Song Book.
And concludes:
Plaintiffs cannot satisfy their initial burden under Rule 56. Accordingly,
Plaintiffs’ Motion is DENIED as to this issue.
http://xkcd.com/1581/
timeo Danaos, et dona ferentis
Seriously with the way the copyright laws are being poked, prodded, stamped on, smacked around the face with a frying pan etc. to make them go on forever, I never thought I'd see the day this little tune became public domain. In all seriousness when I first discovered it was copyrighted I was somewhat shocked, having sung it for decades at friends and then friends kids birthdays etc.
It doesn't matter, because the very existence of that songbook means the song predates 1922, which would mean even an "authorized" 1922 publication's copyright would have expired.
Warner behavior here should be enough for all American to buy nothing what so ever Warner. But we are a society that really does not car about anything unless they are the one in court.
Not that I am any different perhaps social media is putting a cap on bad corporate behavior.
But I doubt it.
I bet that 26 years sentence for shipping bad food will leave a mark.
In the 1980s I could not imagine the Berlin Wall coming down.
This is kind of like that.
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
The judge did not rule that it is public domain, he ruled that the copyright only covered specific piano arrangements of the music, not the actual song an not the lyrics. Which is interesting as the evidence held by Warner/Chappell Music proved they never had legal claim to copyright on it, and that any copyright would have ended 10 years ago. I'm guessing the judge was just throwing them a bone.
Warner/Chappell Music kept all the original documentation from the Clayton F. Summy Co. filing of the copyright. Unfortunately, some of the documentation was never submitted as part of the copyright claim because it proved that the company had no legal grounds to the copyright.
As part of the case Warner/Chappell Music had to show all the information they had, which included the unfilled documents. The music was actually from another song dating older than the lyrics. The suspected origin of the lyrics, at least the first written account, put it out of its maximum copyright period in 2005.
We need to prove that Warner and their lawyers intended to inflict emotional distress on the people who thought about using the song without licensing it.
Then, everyone who was ever subjected to that absurd restaurant version can sue Warner for Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress.
Depending on your state's laws, you may be able to sue because you were damaged by Warner's fraud because it damaged you, even though you were not the direct victim of the fraud. (I phrased that wrong, because I am not a lawyer.)
At the very least, Warner was negligent in claiming they owned a copyright that they did not own.
We also need a list of Warner offices in various places, so we don't all have to cross state lines to sue them.
Finally, we might benefit from the largest class action lawsuit ever. How may billions of birthdays were affected by this Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress, Fraud, and Negligence?
We can put Warner out of business, and strike a blow against CopyFraud.
No, the judge did not rule that it was in the public domain, only that Warner didn't have a valid copyright on it. The song is now an "orphan work."
we won't have to listen to those custom birthday songs in chain restaurants.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Largely tunelessly, of course. The way it's meant to be sung. https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
I should try filing a class action lawsuit against someone with the same first name as me... I could use a big boat.