
Charity claims it owns “Happy Birthday” song’s copyright - nkurz
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/11/a-new-happy-birthday-boss-charity-claims-it-owns-famous-songs-copyright/
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raving-richard
Please note: "Happy Birthday" is well out of copyright in a number of
countries that aren't the USA. Including Australia, and any other country that
applied the rule that copyright expired 50 years after the death of the
author. According to Wikipedia, the copyright expires in the EU at the end of
next year (70 years after the death of the last author).

The fact that copyright extends for so long is a travesty and is something
that we all should be fighting against (along with all the myriad of other
injustices around...).

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jimrandomh
This case is sufficiently absurd that its very existence hurts the credibility
of the courts. They're allowing peoples' right to sing "Happy Birthday" to
depend on the details of a sale that took place in _1893_.

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ps4fanboy
Ancient copyrights are the ultimate rent seeking of our time.

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theseatoms
Not land ownership?

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nitrogen
The difference between land and music is that _land is actually scarce_.

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fennecfoxen
Also, nobody ever really _builds_ expensive things on top of music that
they'll lose if it's suddenly played by other people.

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Natsu
Actually they sort of do: people make derivative works or compilations that
become encumbered when something out of copyright is found to be in copyright
again. Something which _has_ happened thanks to nonsense like "common law"
state copyrights and retroactive extensions.

Of course, that's an argument against the practice rather than for it.

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scoot
How on earth is a 100+ year old song still in copyright anyway, even if the
author was known?

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NameNickHN
It looks like this will be the norm in a couple of years. I expect that there
will be a time when no music or books are entering the public domain anymore.

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angelbob
We're basically there already. Disney pushes back the copyright date every
decade or two so that Mickey Mouse (steamboat willy, 1920s) never gets into
the public domain.

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danieltillett
The ip Disney is trying to protect is Winnie the poo.

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AC__
It's a good thing TPP will strengthen copyright laws and lengthen terms, err
wait, what did I say?

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emtwins
a few weeks ago the supreme court said it wasn't able to have the copyright
law applied to it

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tcdent
A "birthday charity" sounds like a great idea to me.

Have a party, sing the song, everyone present donates $1 to charity for the
"licensing rights".

I haven't done the math, but I'm sure it's not an insignificant amount of
money.

Charity: water has a program similar to this.

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nathancahill
Except collecting donations for charity:water actually goes to bring water to
developing countries instead of the pockets of billionaires. Minor difference.

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tcdent
My comment did not advocate benefiting billionaires.

