It goes like this: In 1893, a couple of lines of music were published in a book. The piece of music is eight bars long, and consists of a single-note melody which can be hummed in its entirety in about six seconds.
In 1927, this song was published in a separate compilation of similar musical pieces, with different lyrics which are known to have been informally attached to it for some time.
And now, as a result, if you want to reproduce the song Happy Birthday in any kind of media, you need to pay the Warner/Chappell Music Group for the right to do so, or risk being sued.
They collect millions of dollars every year this way. By claiming some bizarre kind of “ownership” of a universally familiar melody composed well over a century ago by some person or persons entirely unconnected with the people now profiting from it.
I’m trying to imagine a basically worse person than someone who’d demand money from someone else for the right to sing Happy Birthday. If you can think of anything more viscerally contemptible, let me know.
Old news. Court case against Warner/Chappel has “smoking gun.” Looks like Warners may owe a lot of people a lot of money, and “Happy Birthday” will be once again free to sing without remuneration.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/07/29/surprise-you-may-soon-be-able-to-sing-happy-birthday-on-film-without-being-sued/
Well, you say “old news” – your link’s actually older than mine, although it is a good recap. This blog’s not really about providing regular up-to-the-minute updates on the immediate goings-on of the world, anyway. I just hadn’t written about this particular point of IP lunacy before and thought it worth mentioning.
It feels a bit pre-emptive to get excited while litigation is still ongoing, but hopefully you’re right. It *should* have been free to sing for a number of decades now, but that hasn’t stopped the law making an ass of itself for this long, so I’m holding out until we get some actual meaningful decisions.
[…] on that note, the insane Warner/Chappell copyright claim on Happy Birthday To You is finally no more after a ruling this week. While this does not mean the song is now in the public […]
[…] I often talk about what bullshit copyright law is, and the insane ways in which it stifles and punishes creativity. That you can buy somebody else’s intellectual property and hike the price of life-saving medication several thousand percent, in a way that excludes anyone else from providing fair competition by undercutting you, is one of the more infuriating demonstrations of civilisational adequacy of the moment. That and the way one corporation, until recently, was making millions charging people to sing Happy Birthday. […]