It's unpopular in our industry, but I personally don't believe in ownership of ideas or information.<p>When someone can tell me who owns the number 2, I will tell you who owns our cultural heritage of songs.<p>Remember: copyright is a legal fiction created by congress that exists solely to prop up industries. Most people don't believe in it, as evidenced by the massive sharing of information on the internet condemned by it.
You could always sing Steven Colbert's royalty-free birthday song:<p><a href="http://thecolbertreport.cc.com/videos/3si7rs/warner-music-s--happy-birthday--copyright" rel="nofollow">http://thecolbertreport.cc.com/videos/3si7rs/warner-music-s-...</a>
I'll just add this to the list of 10,000 other felonies I unknowingly commit every day.<p>But seriously, most of the claims here are ridiculous and false. Not surprising considering the source. What's that anecdote about taking legal advice off the internet though? That applies to their site as well as my comment equally.
The sorry and incoherent state of copyright law in the year 2015:<p><i>Richard Prince</i>'s version of Fair Use [1] and the other extreme which consists of this song and the <i>Marvin Gaye</i> vs. <i>Thicke</i>/<i>Williams</i> situation [2]. It's just crazy that these two extremes co-exist under the same law.<p>How is putting in a different name of the jubilant and some variation in the performance not on the same level of appropriation and fair use compared to <i>Prince</i>'s instagram-plus-a-comment work?<p>[1] <a href="http://petapixel.com/2015/05/21/richard-prince-selling-other-peoples-instagram-shots-without-permission-for-100k/" rel="nofollow">http://petapixel.com/2015/05/21/richard-prince-selling-other...</a><p>[2] <a href="http://qz.com/360126/a-copyright-victory-for-marvin-gayes-family-is-terrible-for-the-future-of-music/" rel="nofollow">http://qz.com/360126/a-copyright-victory-for-marvin-gayes-fa...</a>
I've met people who work for the copyright office in DC. They've never heard of fair use, they think that it means when you use their content that you have to pay them fairly. They think they work for the big corporations and prevent the rest of the people from stealing things from them.
You could just sing about an Egyptian river god instead:
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2f2PCWYAZQc" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2f2PCWYAZQc</a>
There has been a lawsuit (actually several, since consolidated) about this winding its way through the courts since 2013.<p><a href="http://www.plainsite.org/dockets/u2yv5yz8/california-central-district-court/rupa-marya-v-warner-chappell-music-inc/" rel="nofollow">http://www.plainsite.org/dockets/u2yv5yz8/california-central...</a>
Futurama's re-work of the 'happy birthday' lyrics, seemingly because they've changed in the future, dodges this nicely:<p>What day is today?
It's X's Birthday,
What a day for a birthday,
let's all have some cake!
<i>You can support us by buying overpriced items in the official Unhappy Birthday store.</i><p>This site strikes me as a masterful troll utilizing Poe's law that might actually turn a profit! Genius.
Why nothing in there about the current lawsuit?<p><a href="http://www.plainsite.org/dockets/u2yv5yz8/california-central-district-court/rupa-marya-v-warner-chappell-music-inc/" rel="nofollow">http://www.plainsite.org/dockets/u2yv5yz8/california-central...</a><p>This is a topic that's dear to my heart since I've written/am producting a screenplay that uses the Happy Birthday song twice, and am thus in the position of having to budget for either a performance license or legal action over a song which is almost certainly in the public domain.<p>Edit: I see another commenter brought it up earlier today.
What would happen if people started flooding ASCAP with these violation notices? Could we perhaps send a message over how ridiculously common it is to sing this song in public by overloading them with so much paperwork it ends up costing them more money than they receive in collecting royalties? Just a thought.
Someone needs to build Shazam, but instead of just identifying songs, it identifies the people singing them (perhaps via the owner's Facebook profile?), and informs ASCAP.
From the title I was hoping this was about Morrissey.<p><pre><code> I've come to wish you an unhappy birth-dayyy.
because you're evil and you lie and I wish you would die.
</code></pre>
Which, I'm thinking that he should have gotten a decent life out of writing those songs and I hope Jeff Bezos pays him for all the plays I run up on Amazon [ <a href="http://amzn.to/1cXjn7f" rel="nofollow">http://amzn.to/1cXjn7f</a> ]<p>That's the essential tension, we want to reward artists for brightening our lives and making music; but we don't see why a bunch of gentlemen in 3 piece suits who don't make music or write stories or do much of anything but attend meetings and put the hurt on the regular people should be getting mad money out of the deal based on a government controlled monopoly.<p>The rentier class needs to be disbanded.
IANAL, but this seems completely backwards:<p>> However, if you do it in an restaurant — and if the restaurant hasn't already worked out a deal with ASCAP — you may be engaging in copyright infringement.<p>If the RESTAURANT sings it, with its indirect commercial advantage, then this could be true. However, if YOU sing it and you don't belong to the restaurant's payroll, how can you be getting "advantage" of it?
Here is an interesting documentary about the history of copyright, the role of Big Content, and a future vision on copyright [1] Also covers the happy birthday song.<p>[1] Rip: a Remix Manifesto, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2EnX0vACj4Q" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2EnX0vACj4Q</a>
Tried sending a sarcastic email, but it bounced. Here's the message:<p>We're writing to let you know that the group you tried to contact (licensing) may not exist, or you may not have permission to post messages to the group. A few more details on why you weren't able to post:<p>* You might have spelled or formatted the group name incorrectly.
* The owner of the group may have removed this group.
* You may need to join the group before receiving permission to post.
* This group may not be open to posting.<p>If you have questions related to this or any other Google Group, visit the Help Center at <a href="http://support.google.com/a/ascap.com/bin/topic.py?topic=25838" rel="nofollow">http://support.google.com/a/ascap.com/bin/topic.py?topic=258...</a>.<p>Thanks,<p>ascap.com admins
Anyone knows what's up with foreign translations?<p>If the music is in the public domain and it is the English lyrics that are copyrighted, perhaps the Klingon - for instance - version is not subject to enforcement, due to lack of interest or known rights.
The judge hasn't ruled yet[1], so this "grassroots" (<i>ahem</i>) movement may be a little premature.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.law360.com/cases/51c4a8e9bbec94458c000001?article_sidebar=1" rel="nofollow">http://www.law360.com/cases/51c4a8e9bbec94458c000001?article...</a>
"Jessica Hill published and copyrighted Happy Birthday in 1935. While the copyright should have expired in 1991..."<p>1935-1991 is a 56 year term? Why did they pick that particular length (the 1909 extension)? Seems rather arbitrary and goes against the point that the extensions are bad.
I've come to wish you an unhappy settlement<p>Because you're evil<p>And you lie<p>And if you should die<p>"Good riddance Time Warner" I'll cry
The problem is not copyright, but copyright terms ... a 3-5 year term will allow such problems to not exist. And 90% of monetization is during that period anyway.
these copyright and patents are a huge hindrance to creativity. Now you cannot make a new product because somewhere someone has it copyrighted. I had at least 5-7 products in mind but could not build it , because my patent filing team says, we will end up paying huge royalties if we go on with this project. I wish i could burn all patents and copyright and recreate everything open source.
Obligatory link to Everthing is a Remix:<p><a href="http://everythingisaremix.info" rel="nofollow">http://everythingisaremix.info</a>
I honestly can't tell if this is supposed to be a sarcastic comment on current state of copyright and copyright enforcement in the US, or if this is actually suggesting that people contact ASCAP and Time Warner about violations. I'm quite sure that it is actually talking about the difficulty of enforcing bans on popular songs that the general public assumes are in the public domain. Maybe my Aspergers is showing...