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Re: MAFIAA Attacks Children, Professor Accuses MAFIAA of Abusing the Law

Moshe Goldfarb wrote:

> On Sun, 31 May 2009 21:12:48 -0700 (PDT), unionpenny@xxxxxxxxx
> wrote:
> 
>> On May 29, 11:50 pm, Hadron <hadronqu...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> 
>>> Holy cow. If YOU wrote an OS would you expect to paid once and then
>>> provide free updates and upgrades for years?
>> 
>> So when can we expect an update for Happy Birthday?
> 
> Why?
> Did you forget the words?

No but you cannot post the lyrics for Happy Birthday here or even sing the
song in public without risking getting sued for copyright theft - it's
still in copyright till 2030 in USA and 2016 in Europe despite being based
on a song written in 1893 (called 'Good morning to you', the writers of
which got the copyright on happy birthday in 1935 after suing for the
similarity to the earlier song and winning) and despite the original
copyright holders having died in 1946. 

This is a strange one - the lyrics are still in copyright but the tune is
public domain having been published before copyrights were introduced in
1909. The Lyrics were also not written by those who obtained the original
copyright on them either but were won in court because they used the same
tune as the good morning to you song that's now public domain.

How does this type of copyright benefit anyone then - Warner music currently
get the royalties on this song ($2m per year) over 60 years after the death
of the writers of a public domain song with same tune despite neither
Warner or the original copyright owner writing the bit that's now
copyrighted.

http://www.snopes.com/music/songs/birthday.asp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Birthday_to_You
http://www.unhappybirthday.com/
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1111624
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2003/7/5/112441/6280

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