Wednesday, October 24, 2012
"Happy Birthday to Yo....." Oh Wait, That Song is Copyrighted
An individual lawyer does his best to win a case because: 1) They'll make more money. 2) Their reputation will go up which will make them worth more. 3) They might actually care about the case. Because of these lawyers' behaviors we have had numerous court cases finish with the bad guys winning. Over time these types of lawyers have brought about an incapacitated patent system. They only care about winning their care no matter if it's ethical or not. Patent laws kill creativity and turn the American dream into a nightmare. Excessive amounts of time and money are wasted in the many patent related cases instead of being invested into business/family productivity. The Happy Birthday song is copyrighted, hence you only hear it in big time movies that can afford paying for usage rights. The "Happy Birthday" song is a huge part of our culture, but at one point some lawyer won a case which allowed that song to be copyrighted despite it being created long before and in turn thrashing that part of our culture in our media. Have you ever wondered why we don't see more foreign films brought to America? They simply can't afford our copyright laws.
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I had never paid close attention to which movies use the Happy Birthday song, but will from now on. It's ridiculous how some things are patented when they are so obviously part of a common collection of information shared by society, like that song, or tying your shoes (not sure if there's a patent on that, but I'm sure someone has tried).
ReplyDeletetime waRNER!! >_>
ReplyDeleteIsn't it Jackson Studios (as in Michael Jackson) that owns the copyright?
ReplyDeleteI heard the Church got in trouble for singing Happy Birthday to Pres. Hinckley and then distributing the DVD of his birthday celebration. Ridiculous...
It is crazy what is patented sometimes. I have a perfect solution to our unemployment problem. The government should hire a bunch of people to go through all the patents and throw out all the obviously ridiculous ones...
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