Posts Tagged: "happy birthday"

For as long as I can remember, whenever we celebrated a birthday, we inevitably would gather around the birthday boy or girl and sing “Happy Birthday To You.” But now that the copyright is in question, new evidence brought to light that the song belonged in the public domain. Happy Birthday may very well be the oldest – and most widely recognizable – orphan work of all time. In 2013, a documentary filmmaker challenged the copyright on the world’s most popular song, calling Warner/Chappell Music’s claim to copyright royalties bogus. The filmmakers’ claim was no small declaration. By 1996, Warner/Chappell, who since 1988 has purported to own the rights to the song, was collecting over $2 million per year in licensing fees. The basis of Warner/Chappell’s claim is a copyright registration from 1935, made by the Summy Company, Warner/Chappell’s predecessor in interest.

On October 10, 1999, I remember sitting at my desk in my apartment in Winter Park, Florida. I had just starting teaching as a full time law school professor several months earlier. So many things have changed since then. I’ve moved all over the country, I’ve traveled all over the country, I’ve gotten married, we navigated the near collapse of the U.S. economy and like so many, the near collapse of our personal economy. My mother passed in 2012, which was undoubtedly the lowest moment in my entire life. A year later my father-in-law also passed. While there have no doubt been trying times, we have shared many great moments personally, and with those in our community who have become our friends. But since October 10, 1999, the one constant for me has been IPWatchdog.com, which went live for the first time 15 years ago today.

The new reality is that content creators are getting squeezed all around. Increasingly many want things to be free and don’t care whether they copy a public domain work or whether it is something that is copyrighted. They don’t see it as wrong, but this makes it difficult to make a living for content creators. Truthfully, for some content creators it is darn near impossible. Yet everywhere you turn content creators are getting the short end of the stick. If it isn’t blatant and wanton copyright infringement online (which I have to deal with all the time), it is authors getting pennies on the dollar for eBooks or musicians who worked with Pandora to help the company get off the ground taken to Congress so the U.S. government can step in and take from creators for the benefit of the company they helped create. Even the name of the bill supported by Pandora — the Internet Radio Fairness Act — is insulting and misleading.

It is almost difficult to believe that 10 years ago today IPWatchdog.com first launched.  At the time I was living in Orlando, Florida, and had just embarked upon what I had hoped would be a career as a full-time law school professor.  Things didn’t quite go according to plan on that front, but through all my travels, teaching at various…