Fast Company | Business + Innovation: The headlines on Tuesday and Wednesday blared, "Happy Birthday found to be in the public domain." Unfortunately and confusingly, they were incorrect. A judge's ruling in a suit filed two years against the ostensible current rights holders for the lyrics to that song, Warner-Chappell Music, didn't decide that. Instead, the judge found that Warner-Chappell lacked valid rights to the lyrics, whether or not they remained under copyright protection, even as it collected fees to the tune of $2 million a year.
2 comments:
I think I just got frustrated and tired with this topic. This argument will just never ends. I’ve been hearing about this happy birthday copyrights since I was a sophomore taking laws for music business and now it’s still ongoing? I mean, I can think of how much a person who wins the right can gain from owning the song but seriously, THE ENTIRE WORLD KNOWS THIS DAMN SONG. Although the law said if you use the work only for personal use then you can get away with it but I wonder if it’s going to ever be the day when someone will start asking money from every household on every someone’s birthday so they can sing this song? Then if this became too complicated might as well find another song to sing for your birthday party? If it can be “Last Christmas” and “All I want for Christmas is you” holding hand with “Jingle bell” and “Silent night” I’m sure we can come up with some other songs.
And P.S. Yes as a child learning to play piano on your first year we all went through “Good Morning to all” and got confused before. I thought it was the same song with just different verse.
I may need to agree with Attitra about this thing, 130 some odd years later it may be time to let go. Although if I am making two million a year from it I would totally have a hard time letting go of that much money. Unlike Attritra I had only heard about this instance of copyright battle a few years ago (reading this article, it was probably around 2013) but I did think it was a bit nuts, because yes, everyone knows this song, there are versions of it all around the world as well. I don’t know if the company making money off the song is going to ask people in their homes to pay money. I am pretty sure no artist or company could do that, good thing too or my singing in the mirror with my hairbrush sessions could get pricey. With Disney continuing their copyrights (or trying to) till the end of time, I wonder, like the author of this article if the mystery will ever be solved.
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