Two older stories (1996/2008) but still interesting: City may owe royalty if it sings 'Happy Birthd

[The Straight Story]

City may owe royalty if it sings 'Happy Birthday'

Pittsburgh turns 250 this fall, but if organizers plan to sing happy birthday during October's soiree they'd better be prepared to fork over some cash.

"Happy Birthday to You," the four-line ditty heard by all at least once a year, is under copyright -- until 2030.

"I know this is hard to believe," said Phil Crosland, a spokesman for the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, or ASCAP. "But 'Happy Birthday' is a copyrighted composition."

The tune was written in 1893 as "Good Morning to All" by Kentucky schoolteachers and sisters Mildred and Patty Hill. Another Hill sister and a Chicago-based music publisher copyrighted "Happy Birthday to You" in 1935.

Under federal copyright laws at the time, the song would have entered the public domain by 1991, at the latest. But the Copyright Act of 1978 extended protection to 75 years, and the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998 tacked on another 20.

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/specialreports/250-anniversary/s_585827.html

Birds sing, but campers can’t - unless they pay up

By Lisa Bannon

Something is missing at Diablo Day Camp this year. At the 3 p.m. sing-along in a wooded canyon near Oakland, Calif, 214 Girl Scouts are learning the summer dance craze, the Macarena. Keeping time by slapping their hands across their arms and hips, they jiggle, hop and stomp. They spin, wiggle and shake. They bounce for two minutes. In silence.

"Yesterday, I told them we could be sued if we played the music," explains Teesie King, camp codirector and a volunteer mom. "So they decided they'd learn it without the music." Watching the campers' mute contortions, King shakes her head. "It seems so different," she allows, "when you do the Macarena in silence."

Starting this summer, the American Society of Composers, Authors & Publishers (ASCAP) has informed camps nationwide that they must pay license fees to use any of the 4 million copyrighted songs written or published by ASCAP's 68,000 members. Those who sing or play but don’t pay, ASCAP warns, might be violating the law. Like restaurants, hotels, bars, stores and clubs - which already pay fees to use copyrighted music - camps, including nonprofit ones such as those run by the Girl Scouts, are being told to ante up. The demand covers not only recorded music but also songs around the campfire.
"They buy paper, twine and glue for their crafts - they can pay for the music, too," says John Lo Frumento, ASCAP's chief operating officer. If offenders keep singing without paying, he says, we will sue them if necessary."

No more "Edelweiss" free of charge. No more "This Land Is Your Land." An ASCAP spokesman says "Kumbaya" isn't on its list, but "God Bless America" is. Diablo, an all-volunteer day camp that charges girls $44 a week to cover expenses, would owe ASCAP $591 this year, based on the camp's size and how long it runs. Another composer group, Sesac, Inc., which owns copyrights to such tunes as Bob Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind," says it plans to ask camps for another set of royalties in the fall.

http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/communications/ASCAP.html

[MineralMan]

1. Here's a new Birthday Song. I hereby donate it to the public

domain:

Birthday Song

It's your birthday, my dear.
So be of good cheer.
It's a common occurence,
And nothing to fear.


Sung to the same tune as Happy Birthday to You. Only the words of that song are protected by copyright. So sing away freely.

[saras]

2. Fuck ASCAP. I'm a composer and musician, and they DO NOT represent my interests.

I think their long-term plan is to destroy American popular music - to erase from our culture all the music we value and replace it with their shitspout of what's currently hip.

For chrissakes, Dylan and Guthrie stole pretty much everything they did - that's the whole POINT. It's FOLK music.

"Intellectual property" has ALWAYS held back human progress, whether it was China, Japan, Korea etc. warring over the 'secrets' of making high-quality pottery, the slave labor involved in keeping the 'secrets' of Venetian glassmaking, the bizarrely anticompetitive patent shenanigans of early twentieth century media companies, or the current stifling of the information age, the laws serve to suppress progress and funnel money into the hands of the wealthy.

A songwriter or singer has NO RIGHT to get paid AGAIN for something they created fifty years ago than a carpenter has a right to collect royalties forever from the owner of every home he's ever pounded framing nails for. And no one, INCLUDING FAMILY, has a right to control the creations of a dead person.

Copyright should reside in the creator ONLY, and only for so long as the item is kept in print and available for public sale. If you abandon your product, it becomes public domain. Permanently. And there's no reason to issue copyrights for minor modifications of public domain works, either.

<http://musicyouwont.blogspot.com/2008/06/supercalafajalistickespeealadojus-and.html|A not uncommon example of copyright abuse from Disney>

[On the Road]

3. 6 Laws You've Broken Without Even Realizing It

#5. Singing "Happy Birthday to You" in Public

http://www.cracked.com/article_19450_6-laws-youve-broken-without-even-realizing-it.html