Federal judge rules 'Happy Birthday' song in public domain

Federal judge rules 'Happy Birthday' song in public domain

"The music publishing company that has been collecting royalties on the song 'Happy Birthday To You' for years does not hold a valid copyright on the lyrics to the tune that is one of the mostly widely sung in the world, a federal judge ruled Tuesday.

U.S. District Judge George H. King determined the song's original copyright, obtained by the Clayton F. Summy Co. from the song's writers, only covered specific piano arrangements of the song and not its lyrics. The basic tune of the song, derived from another popular children's song, 'Good Morning to All,' has long been in the public domain."

The Supreme Court doesn't understand software, and that's a problem

Vox's Timothy Lee says The Supreme Court doesn't understand software, and that's a problem "The problem, at root, is that the courts are confused about the nature of software. The courts have repeatedly said that mathematical algorithms can't be patented. But many judges also seem to believe that some software is worthy of patent protection. The problem is that 'software' and 'mathematical algorithm' are two terms for the same thing. Until the courts understand that, the laws regarding software patents are going to be incoherent."

John Duffy has a detailed legal analysis in SCOTUSblog, Opinion analysis: The uncertain expansion of judge-made exceptions to patentability.

Op-Ed: Bad copyright rules killed Hadfield's Space Oddity

The Ottawa Citizen writes Op-Ed: Bad copyright rules killed Hadfield's Space Oddity .

"As you’re probably aware, Chris Hadfield, back when he was the commander of the International Space Station, recorded an iconic version of Bowie’s 1969 song Space Oddity. The inspiring video was viewed over 22.4 million times on YouTube, inspiring millions and cementing a deserved place in Canadian history. What most people had been unaware of until the previous day, however, was that the world was only allowed to see the video because Bowie had granted Hadfield a one-year license to show it. On May 14, the license expired and Hadfield removed it from public view."

"The common-sense problems, though, are obvious. How does David Bowie’s ability – his right, under copyright law – to disappear Chris Hadfield’s stunning interpretation of Bowie’s 45-year-old song help anybody? Is the world a better place now that this piece of art has officially been scrubbed from existence?"

"At some point, creators and copyright owners have to let go. Once we create something, that’s it – it’s up to others to listen to it, be inspired by it, and use it to create new art, or to take the punk rock ideals you first heard expressed in a Descendents song and go change the world."

A judge just gave an elementary lesson on copyright to the owners of Sherlock Holmes

A judge just gave an elementary lesson on copyright to the owners of Sherlock Holmes

"Sherlock Holmes fanfic authors: You're now free to write your hearts out. The characters, settings and other elements of the detective franchise are officially in the public domain, a federal judge has ruled.

Given that Holmes first appeared in print more than 125 years ago, you'd think that would be obvious. Not according to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's estate, which argues that so long as 10 of his stories remain under copyright, all of the elements therein must also be under copyright, and anyone who uses Holmes, Watson or 221B Baker Street has to pay the estate a licensing fee."

"Judge Rubén Castillo ruled otherwise, saying that every Holmes story that followed the first ought to be considered a derivative based on the original. As far as the court is concerned, Holmes and Watson were fully formed characters by the last page of "A Study in Scarlet." Since anything published before Jan. 1, 1923, is considered public-domain by law — a fact that covers 50 of Conan Doyle's tales d'Sherlock — the editors of the Holmes-derived compendium titled "In the Company of Sherlock Holmes" don't need to pay up."

Wikipedia has a nice list of the ridiculous changes in copyright terms:

Since 1790, Congress has amended US Copyright law several times. Major amendments include:

• Copyright Act of 1790 – established U.S. copyright with term of 14 years with 14-year renewal
• Copyright Act of 1831 – extended the term to 28 years with 14-year renewal
• Copyright Act of 1909 – extended term to 28 years with 28-year renewal
• Universal Copyright Convention – ratified by the U.S. in 1954, and again in 1971, this treaty was developed by UNESCO as an alternative to the Berne Convention
• Copyright Act of 1976 – extended term to either 75 years or life of author plus 50 years (prior to this, "[t]he interim renewal acts of 1962 through 1974 ensured that the copyright in any work in its second term as of September 19, 1962, would not expire before Dec. 31, 1976."); extended federal copyright to unpublished works; preempted state copyright laws; codified much copyright doctrine that had originated in case law
• Berne Convention Implementation Act of 1988 – established copyrights of U.S. works in Berne Convention countries
• Copyright Renewal Act of 1992 – removed the requirement for renewal
• Uruguay Round Agreements Act (URAA) of 1994 – restored U.S. copyright for certain foreign works
• Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998 – extended terms to 95/120 years or life plus 70 years

Google Books ruled legal in massive win for fair use

Ars Technica explains Google Books ruled legal in massive win for fair use "A long-running copyright lawsuit between the Authors' Guild and Google over its book-scanning project is over, and Google has won on the grounds that its scanning is 'fair use.' In other words, the snippets of books that Google shows for free don't break copyright, and Google doesn't need the authors' permission to engage in the scanning and display of short bits of books."

In Supreme Court Opinions, Clicks That Lead Nowhere

The New York Times wrote In Supreme Court Opinions, Clicks That Lead Nowhere

"Supreme Court opinions have come down with a bad case of link rot. According to a new study, 49 percent of the hyperlinks in Supreme Court decisions no longer work."

"For most of the Supreme Court’s history, its citations have been to static, permanent sources, typically books. Those citations allowed lawyers and scholars to find, understand and assess the court’s evidence and reasoning. Since 1996, though, justices have cited materials found on the Internet 555 times, the study found. Those citations are very often ephemeral."

"The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, could serve as a model. It maintains an electronic archive of what it calls “webcites” in the PDF format. Professor Zittrain and his colleagues are at work on a more ambitious solution, Perma.cc, a platform built and run by a consortium of law libraries. It allows writers and editors to capture and fix transient information on the Web with a new, permanent link."

Maybe they could link to archive.org instead. If they start keeping their own copies of their cited material, I wonder how long until there's a copyright lawsuit brought. The article mentions that Scalia cited a car chase in The French Connection. Stranger things have happened than Fox suing for a clip of their content posted without their permission (even in obvious fair use situations).

Carpet Designer Threatens CosPlayers With Legal Action

Sometimes lawyers have too much time on their hands. Carpet designer threatens cosplayers with legal action.

"In the world of cosplay, people don’t generally expect to get into trouble for dressing up as well-known characters like Superman or Spock, even though the legal teams at DC Comics or Paramount could probably crush them like a bug. Unfortunately, the designers of the Marriott’s patterned carpets didn’t get the memo about turning a blind eye to cosplay tributes.

Apparently the carpet costumes were so popular that one of the original cosplayers offered a version of the Marriott carpet pattern for the presumably vast number of people who also wanted to dress up in carpet-themed camo gear. Seeing this, carpet designers Couristan Inc. sent cosplay suppliers Volpin Props a Cease & Desist letter."

The Shape of Spectacular Speech: A Visual Analysis of MLK's "I Have a Dream"

The Shape of Spectacular Speech: A Visual Analysis of MLK's "I Have a Dream" | Brain Pickings "Duarte notes the Dr. King spoke in short bursts more reminiscent of poetry than of long-winded lecture-speak and highlights his most powerful rhetorical devices — repetition, metaphors, visual words, references to political documents, citations from sacred texts and spiritual songs — in a fascinating visualization of the speech, demonstrating how it embodies the core principles of her book."

Martin Luther King Jr.'s speech analyzed by Nancy Duarte from Duarte on Vimeo.

Also, The Copyright Battle Behind 'I Have a Dream'. "As Washington gears up to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s historic 'I Have a Dream' speech later this month, one thing might be missing from the celebrations: the speech itself. A full, unedited video clip of the speech is tougher to find than you might think, because of copyright disputes that date back almost as far as the speech itself."

Lawsuit Filed To Prove Happy Birthday Is In The Public Domain

Techdirt explains, Lawsuit Filed To Prove Happy Birthday Is In The Public Domain; Demands Warner Pay Back Millions Of License Fees.

"Happy Birthday remains the most profitable song ever. Every year, it is the song that earns the highest royalty rates, sent to Warner/Chappell Music (which makes millions per year from 'licensing' the song). However, as we've been pointing out for years, the song is almost certainly in the public domain. Robert Brauneis did some fantastic work a few years ago laying out why the song's copyright clearly expired many years ago, even as Warner/Chappell pretends otherwise. You can read all the background, but there are a large number of problems with the copyright, including that the sisters who 'wrote' the song, appear to have written neither the music, nor the lyrics. At best, they may have written a similar song called 'Good Morning to All' in 1893, with the same basic melody, but there's evidence to suggest the melody itself predated the sisters. But, more importantly, the owner of the copyright (already questionable) failed to properly renew it in 1962, which would further establish that it's in the public domain.

The issue, as we've noted, is that it's just not cost effective for anyone to actually stand up and challenge Warner Music, who has strong financial incentive to pretend the copyright is still valid. Well, apparently, someone is pissed off enough to try. The creatively named Good Morning to You Productions, a documentary film company planning a film about the song Happy Birthday, has now filed a lawsuit concerning the copyright of Happy Birthday and are seeking to force Warner/Chappell to return the millions of dollars it has collected over the years. That's going to make this an interesting case."

NYT dumps a copyright snowfall on startup referencing its work

Sometimes lawyers just go too far. NYT dumps a copyright snowfall on startup referencing its work.

After the Battle Against SOPA—What's Next?

Lawrence Lessig has a good article in The Nation, After the Battle Against SOPA—What's Next? "January 18, 2012 could prove to be an incredibly important day, and not just for copyright policy or the Internet. On that day, two critically important things happened: First, with its 6-2 decision in Golan v. Holder, the Supreme Court shut the door, finally and firmly, on any opportunity to meaningfully challenge a copyright statute constitutionally. Second, millions from the Internet opened the door, powerfully if briefly, on the powers that dominatepolicymaking in Washington, and effectively stopped Hollywood’s latest outrage to address ‘piracy’—aka, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), and the Protect IP Act (PIPA)."

How Copyright Industries Con Congress

I'm not normally a fan of CATO but Julian Sanchez used to work for ars and recently took apart the figures that SOPA supporters cite. How Copyright Industries Con Congress.

"The $200–250 billion number had originated in a 1991 sidebar in Forbes, but it was not a measurement of the cost of “piracy” to the U.S. economy. It was an unsourced estimate of the total size of the global market in counterfeit goods. Beyond the obvious fact that these numbers are decades old, counterfeiting of physical goods imported in bulk and sold by domestic retail distributors is, rather obviously, a totally different phenomenon with different policy implications from the problem of illicit individual consumer downloads of movies, music, and software. The 750,000 jobs number had originated in a 1986 speech (yes, 1986) by the secretary of commerce estimating that counterfeiting could cost the United States “anywhere from 130,000 to 750,000″ jobs. Nobody in the Commerce Department was able to identify where those figures had come from. These are the numbers that were driving U.S. copyright policy as recently as 2008—and I’m still seeing them repeated in “fact sheets” circulated by SOPA boosters"

Later on...

"Again, we don’t have the full LEK study, but one of Siwek’s early papers does conveniently reproduce some of LEK’s PowerPoint slides, which attempt to break the data down a bit. Of the total $6.1 billion in annual losses LEK estimated to MPAA studios, the amount attributable to online piracy by users in the United States was $446 million—which, by coincidence, is roughly the amount grossed globally by Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel."

And it gets reduced further. Pretty fun.

How "What What (In the Butt)" unintentionally bolstered "fair use"

Ars Technica wrote an interesting article, How "What What (In the Butt)" unintentionally bolstered "fair use". "Wisconsin, state of my birth, I salute you for turning out federal judges like J.P. Stadtmueller. Stadtmueller is the man who waded into the swampland of fair use, South Park, and "What What (In the Butt)" to deliver a July 6 order that may break new judicial territory by citing South Park episode "Osama bin Laden Has Farty Pants" in its footnotes. And Stadtmueller has the proper feel for the absurd needed in any judge about to rule on a case involving the phrase, "You want to do it in my butt, in my butt?""

It's a nice summary of the case and issues. At the end it quotes Professor Kevin Smith's An easy fair use ruling, but with a message.

"What is significant here is that the judge made the fair use decision before there had been a trial. He examined the pleadings and found that everything he needed to make this easy call was already before him. Then he ruled favorably on a motion to dismiss the case on the basis of those pleadings (technically a “motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim”) and dismissed the case with prejudice (which means plaintiff cannot re-file it).

Librarians and other academics are often afraid to rely on fair use, even when there arguments would be strong, because of the expense of defending a lawsuit even when you win. Content companies often encourage that fear, reminding academics that fair use is a defense that can only be decided with certainty at a trial. While this case is a little bit unusual, it invites us, I think, to look at this “chilling effect” and perhaps lend it less credence."

George Lucas defeated over Star Wars stormtrooper replicas

George Lucas defeated over Star Wars stormtrooper replicas "UK supreme court rules British prop designer, Andrew Ainsworth, may sell replicas of stormtrooper outfits he made for original Star Wars film"

Kind of Screwed

Kind of Screwed. "Last year, I was threatened with a lawsuit over the pixel art album cover for Kind of Bloop. Despite my firm belief that I was legally in the right, I settled out of court to cut my losses. This ordeal was very nerve-wracking for me and my family, and I've had trouble writing about it publicly until now."

There is something wrong with a legal system that is too expensive for people to use.

FYI, the copyright holding photographer has a dream house in NY.

Doctors and dentists tell patients, "all your review are belong to us"

Ars has another good article, Doctors and dentists tell patients, "all your review are belong to us".

"When I walked into the offices of Dr. Ken Cirka, I was looking for cleaner teeth, not material for an Ars Technica story. I needed a new dentist, and Yelp says Dr. Cirka is one of the best in the Philadelphia area. The receptionist handed me a clipboard with forms to fill out. After the usual patient information form, there was a "mutual privacy agreement" that asked me to transfer ownership of any public commentary I might write in the future to Dr. Cirka. Surprised and a little outraged by this, I got into a lengthy discussion with Dr. Cirka's office manager that ended in me refusing to sign and her showing me the door.

The agreement is based on a template supplied by an organization called Medical Justice, and similar agreements have been popping up in doctors' offices across the country. And although Medical Justice and Dr. Cirka both claim otherwise, it seems pretty obvious that the agreements are designed to help medical professionals censor their patients' reviews."

"Doctors and dentists are understandably worried about damage to their reputations from negative reviews, and medical privacy laws do make it tricky for them to respond when their work is unfairly maligned." But the article points out, this isn't the way to correct this problem.

Here's What's Wrong With Our Intellectual Property System

Disney files trademark for "Seal Team 6;" possibly for "Killing bin Laden" snow globes, Christmas ornaments.

"SEAL Team 6 is the elite Navy squad credited with killing Osama bin Laden. One day after the raid, Disney Enterprises, Inc., filed applications with the US. Patent and Trademark Office to trademark the name "SEAL TEAM 6." The trademark has not yet been granted."

A Trove of Historic Jazz Recordings, But You Can’t Hear Them

A Trove of Historic Jazz Recordings has Found a Home in Harlem, But You Can’t Hear Them "It turns out that one man—a jazz musician and technical genius—figured out a way. But during his lifetime, William Savory kept these recordings largely to himself. He refused to reveal how many recordings he had and what performances they contained. He let only a very few of his recordings be heard by a small number of acquaintances. Over time, the Savory collection became a tantalizing enigma to jazz connoisseurs who yearned for access to its treasures. The mystery ended last summer. Six years after Savory passed away, his collection was acquired by the National Jazz Museum in Harlem. And jazz experts were stunned. The extent and quality of the Savory collection was beyond anything they had imagined."


"The question, however, is whether that will happen anytime soon. And if it doesn’t, music fans might be justified in putting the blame on copyright law. “The potential copyright liability that could attach to redistribution of these recordings is so large—and, more importantly, so uncertain—that there may never be a public distribution of the recordings,” wrote David G. Post, a law professor at Temple University in Philadelphia, on the Volokh Conspiracy blog. “Tracking down all the parties who may have a copyright interest in these performances, and therefore an entitlement to royalty payments (or to enjoining their distribution), is a monumental—and quite possibly an impossible—task.”"

Today's TEDTalks

This is the best discussion of copyright I've heard in a while. Johanna Blakley: Lessons from fashion's free culture. "Copyright law's grip on film, music and software barely touches the fashion industry ... and fashion benefits in both innovation and sales, says Johanna Blakley. At TEDxUSC 2010, she talks about what all creative industries can learn from fashion's free culture."



And this is the best explanation for suicide bombers I've seen. Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy: Inside a school for suicide bombers. "Filmmaker Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy takes on a terrifying question: How does the Taliban convince children to become suicide bombers? Propaganda footage from a training camp is intercut with her interviews of young camp graduates. A shocking vision."

Copyright and the World's Most Popular Song

Copyright and the World's Most Popular Song by Robert Brauneis "'Happy Birthday to You' is the best-known and most frequently sung song in the world. Many - including Justice Breyer in his dissent in Eldred v. Ashcroft - have portrayed it as an unoriginal work that is hardly worthy of copyright protection, but nonetheless remains under copyright. Yet close historical scrutiny reveals both of those assumptions to be false. The song that became 'Happy Birthday to You,' originally written with different lyrics as 'Good Morning to All,' was the product of intense creative labor, undertaken with copyright protection in mind. However, it is almost certainly no longer under copyright, due to a lack of evidence about who wrote the words; defective copyright notice; and a failure to file a proper renewal application."