Adding Free Culture Discuss to this chain.
On Sunday, June 16, 2013, Bob Kosovsky wrote:
> I've known about the issues with "Happy Birthday" for many years. (I
> believe there's a permanent display of documents involved in a previous
> court ruling on this song at the NY offices of the National Archives.) One
> of the issues is that many people have assumed that a version earlier than
> the 1935 publication existed, but that version has never been found. As
> copyright law depends on fixed versions, we would need to see this earlier
> version claimed by the documentarian to make a determination. To me it's
> not clear from that scribd.com document that such an earlier version has
> been found. If the copyright really did expire in 1921 on that version
> (making it public domain), why isn't it all over the Internet? Until we
> see proof that an earlier version existed, I don't think it's wise to weigh
> on the issue.
>
> Bob Kosovsky
>
>
> On Sun, Jun 16, 2013 at 12:40 AM, Daniel and Elizabeth Case <
> danc...@frontiernet.net <javascript:_e({}, 'cvml',
> 'danc...@frontiernet.net');>> wrote:
>
>> As some of you may be aware, a documentary filmmaker here in the
>> Southern District of New York has filed the intellectual-property lawsuit
>> everybody has been waiting a long time for, arguing that the copyright om
>> “Happy Birthday to You” is invalid and seeking the return of not only the
>> licensing fee she paid but all the royalties that Warner/Chappell collected
>> from filmmakers since 2009 (i.e., “on behalf of herself and others
>> similarly situated,” as the saying goes)
>>
>>
>>
>> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/14/nyregion/lawsuit-aims-to-strip-happy-birthday-to-you-of-its-copyright.html
>>
>> Filing itself is here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/147645129/Happybirthday.
>> It relies heavily on a 68-page paper by a GWU law professor arguing that
>> any copyright that might have attached to the song would have expired in
>> 1921, and that the song itself may have been a derivative work of a
>> mid-19th century composition and thus did not meet the threshold of
>> originality to begin with.
>>
>> Is it possible that. either ourselves or (probably preferable) through
>> the Free Culture Alliance, we could file an *amicus* brief in support of
>> the plaintiffs, as part of our mission of promoting free content? In light
>> of last year’s *Golan v. Holder* Supreme Court decision restoring
>> copyright to foreign works that had previously been in the public domain,
>> the success of a lawsuit like this seeking to break the copyright on a
>> popular little ditty that shouldn’t be the subject of rent-seeking could
>> only help the free-culture cause. The success of the foundation’s projects
>> despite (or perhaps because of) our deliberate choice of a minimally
>> restrictive IP regime would be something to point to in such a filing.
>>
>> Daniel Case
>>
>> Daniel Case
>>
>>
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>
>
>
> --
> Bob Kosovsky, Ph.D. -- Curator, Rare Books and Manuscripts,
> Music Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts
> blog: http://www.nypl.org/blog/author/44 Twitter: @kos2
> Listowner: OPERA-L ; SMT-TALK ; SMT-ANNOUNCE ; SoundForge-users
> - My opinions do not necessarily represent those of my institutions -
>
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