4th August 2010, 10:50 AM
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Birthday_to_You
Read the copyright part. That's nonsense. It doesn't make sense that the writers of a song can be DEAD, some other company making a dubious claim to copyright, and a third party who by all rights has NO claim to having written the song or paid someone to write it for them can just sign some papers in a back room and suddenly demand royalties. They don't deserve it! They did nothing, they get NOTHING, good day sir!
It's nonsense like this that gives copyright law a bad name. Maybe people who don't have anything to do with the creation of a work of art shouldn't be able to "buy" credit for the work, hmm? Maybe that should be a thing?
I guess the other thing that bugs me is a song that's over a century old somehow isn't in the public domain. How does that work? What sort of legal loopholes allow a song's copyright to transcend the life of it's creators?
Read the copyright part. That's nonsense. It doesn't make sense that the writers of a song can be DEAD, some other company making a dubious claim to copyright, and a third party who by all rights has NO claim to having written the song or paid someone to write it for them can just sign some papers in a back room and suddenly demand royalties. They don't deserve it! They did nothing, they get NOTHING, good day sir!
It's nonsense like this that gives copyright law a bad name. Maybe people who don't have anything to do with the creation of a work of art shouldn't be able to "buy" credit for the work, hmm? Maybe that should be a thing?
I guess the other thing that bugs me is a song that's over a century old somehow isn't in the public domain. How does that work? What sort of legal loopholes allow a song's copyright to transcend the life of it's creators?
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)