Happy Birthday is back home

Now, it is silly that the song Happy Birthday to be under copyright. As the songs origins hail from before 1921, there is literally no way for it to still be under copyright still.

But for years, Warner has claimed that, as buyers of the company that bought the company that bought the rights from the Hill Sisters, the duo of siblings that composed the song that eventually became Happy Birthday, the most sung song in the world, they owned the rights to it. Warner's earned 2 million dollars from licensing  it, and forced businesses from all over the planet to come up with their own birthday songs. Imagine how many films depicting normal, everyday life had to go "hum...skip to the blowing of the candles." Not being able to display something that's basically normal like for millions of people.

But now a federal judge has arrived at a conclusion regarding the case to prove the song is public domain, ironically brought on by other Hollywood types who wanted to use the song for their documentary about it. Uh...you'd think "making a documentary about it" would be covered by fair use. You know maybe if Warner hadn't been so greedy and let the Happy Birthday Documentary guys off without paying the fee, we wouldn't be in this situation.

Anyway, judge found that Warner is not the owner of Happy Birthday and that, while they own the copyright to SOMETHING it is not the full rights to the song. While I wish the conclusion of the case had been based on "it is impossible for Warner to lay claim to something from before  1921, it is nice to see justice finally done.

Well, mostly done. The jury, as it where, is still out on whether Warner has to give back the money it earned from licensing fees it basically suckered people out of. One would hope there would at least be some kind of consequence for purposely lying about copyright and abusing it like that, creating unfair competition and robbing the public of things they rightfully deserve. And wasting the time and resources of the state purposely with the full intention of deceit.

I mean, we've established that Copyright is serious enough to travel all the way across the planet just to get a guy who is streaming American Movies. Well, this guys lied about owning a public cultural  resource and earned millions from that lie. I would think that's just as serious, if not more. We're fleecing teenagers for downloading mp3s, what would we do with enormous corporations doing something like this?

But it's a time for joy, now, not contention. Here is the song, Puerto Rican style.