Is this why Futurama doesn't use the birthday song?

[Dark Jaguar]

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?

[A Black Falcon]

You didn't know that Happy Birthday To You is a copyrighted song? Yes, that is indeed why movies, TV shows, etc. almost never use it.

[Dark Jaguar]

I could have sworn I'd seen it all the time on TV... Huh...

And NO ONE knows that by the way. I brought it up to friends and family today in various conversations, they were all taken aback. Most of them didn't even believe me :D.

Ya know suddenly that episode of ATHF where Shake tries to write the NEW birthday song has some outside context. I bet the writers were about to put the song in there and suddenly a lawyer told them to cease and desist, so they decided to make fun of the whole idea.

[Great Rumbler]

It's not exactly some secret that nobody knows about.

[lazyfatbum]

God damn ABF and GR chime in like clockwork to call you an idiot.

When I was bartending i sang the happy birthday song to a retired fireman dude who lost his leg falling from 3 stories. I made the joke of "was it lord of the rings?" we had a good time. My manager told me "You cant sing that" so I sang the stevie wonder happy birthday song and that pissed off some black woman who said "That's Dr. King's song" so I went home, created a contract between me and the manager, printed it out and got him to sign it where it clearly states that my version of the happy birthday song is a parody by singing the same tune but with the words 'happy vaginal passing day'.

Mad tips.

[Dark Jaguar]

It's not exactly some secret that nobody knows about.

Yeah I know it's not a secret, but at the same time it's new to me, and for that matter I bet most people have no idea that's the case. Like I said, not a single one of the friends or family I talked to knew about it. That's anecdotal, but still.

[Sacred Jellybean]

Yeah, I learned about this from a friend in college, but it's not exactly common knowledge among everyone. This is why if you go to a restaurant on your birthday and someone decides to be dick and tell the waiters to sing for you, it's never the actual birthday song, always some silly variation of a public domain song, like the military marching song ("I don't know but I've been told, they say Alaska's mighty cold" etc).

I first typed that out as "pubic domain", god damn mind in the gutter. D:

[A Black Falcon]

I thought this was somewhat common knowledge... not extremely well known, I guess, but pretty commonly known...

[Dark Jaguar]

Well I just saw them sing the Happy Birthday song on that "Look Around You" show, so I guess not even some TV executives know (or care as the case may be). Good for them.

[Great Rumbler]

Or they just paid to have it.

[Dark Jaguar]

I really doubt that such a thing would ever be enforced. Seriously, I'd love to see them actually sue someone over that. "Bring whoever wrote it in here or get out of the court room."

[Great Rumbler]

Copyrights don't work that way.

[Dark Jaguar]

Well you shouldn't be able to trade them like baseball cards either. I honestly don't think this copyright "works" this way either. I'm pretty sure it's invalid.

[lazyfatbum]

Yeah.

But i'm curious though because if you make a parody of something (Star Wars) and copy everything down to a T with the only stipulation of 'make it funny' you can steal anything. So why cant this be done with Happy Birthday? Weird Al steals songs out right, just makes it funny and this is perfectly accepted. So I can imagine 'Have a very happy unbirthday" is owned by Disney regardless of the lyrics and notes being almost the same, but what about "Stupid birthday song to you, stupid birthday song to you, we avoided the copyrights, stupid birthday song to you."?

[Great Rumbler]

Weird Al does get approval for all the parodies he does, although he doesn't necessarily have to.

[EdenMaster]

Weird Al does get approval for all the parodies he does, although he doesn't necessarily have to.

Correct, in fact when he was misinformed by one of his people that Coolio had agreed to a parody, when in fact he didn't, he was mortified. If I recall correctly, since that incident, he's approached every artist personally about parodying their songs. Most of the time, the artists consider it an honor and are cool with it, and no he doesn't have to, but Al's just a classy guy that way.

[lazyfatbum]

Yeah but legally he wouldn't have to get approval is what i'm saying, he just isn't a dick about it.