Unhappy Birthday?
(crossposted from CreativeFreedom.org.nz)
Did you know that the song Happy Birthday is copyrighted and that the copyright is currently owned and actively enforced by Time Warner? Did you know that if you sing any copyrighted song: …at a place open to the public…or among a substantial number of people who are not family or friends…you are involved in a public performance of that work? Did you know an unauthorized public performance is a form of copyright infringement? Read more at Unhappy Birthday.com
UPDATE: the EFF have announced that they’re about to take action against YouTube and Warner Brothers to defend a girl who sung Winter Wonderland (1934). EFF say: These [copyright infringement detection systems] are still primitive and unable to distinguish a transformative remix from copyright infringement. So unless they leave lots of breathing room for remixed content, these filters end up sideswiping lots of fair uses. And that’s exactly what has happened these past few weeks”.
(above text quoted from unhappybirthday.com)
