4 ms·

Copyright and the World's Most Popular Song

28 points by yannis 17y ago

goodness 17y ago
"...was the product of intense creative labor" I don't mean to downplay the amount of work that goes in to writing a song, but this seems a bit over the top. Short little melodies like this are trivial to write. My pre-school age children come up with these all the time. The tune of Happy Birthday doesn't seem particularly catchy to me. We've just heard it repeated so many times.
- anamax 17y ago
  > I don't mean to downplay the amount of work that goes in to writing a song, but this seems a bit over the top. Short little melodies like this are trivial to write. My pre-school age children come up with these all the time. > The tune of Happy Birthday doesn't seem particularly catchy to me. We've just heard it repeated so many times. Read the story. The authors actually did a lot of work on Happy Birthday. (They had a couple of conflicting goals and did a lot of testing.) While short little melodies are trivial to write, HB isn't just any short little melody. Disagree? Come up with a few that work as well. Riches await.
  - goodness 17y ago
    I read the story. It claims to be "a product of a highly focused, laborious effort to write a song that was extremely simple to sing yet musically interesting and emotionally expressive, undertaken by a composer and an educator who happened to be sisters." I still don't really buy that it was "laborious effort." And I don't think the song is popular because of some fantastic musical merits. If the song was still "good morning to all" then it would be just another song. The only reason it has any monetary value is because it became associated with birthdays.
    - anamax 17y ago
      > I still don't really buy that it was "laborious effort." Having read accounts of said effort, I wonder what you think qualifies as laborious. They did days of testing with groups of kids. > And I don't think the song is popular because of some fantastic musical merits. And no one said that it has fantastic musical merits. Instead, they say that it has fantastic kid music merits. That's a hard market to crack. Lots of people try to write Barney, but few actually pull it off. There are lots of songs that could have become the standard. That one did, by design and labor.
LucaDuval 17y ago
I remember reading a sci-fi novel that impressed me as a child about the wife of a recently deceased composer corrupting a politician to not vote for a proposal to extend the copyright on the basis that there are only a limitited number of possible "interesting" combinations of notes. Hence an unlimited copyright is like a death sentence to the creativity of all future musicians. I believe that the actual limit of 50 years is already too much.
- goodness 17y ago
  I wonder why there aren't copyright trolls similar to patent trolls. They could just release huge libraries of computer generated music with all of these interesting combinations of notes. Then do automated comparisons of popular songs to find "violations." Could also be another one of those cases of getting an absurd law revoked by exercising it.
  - lmkg 17y ago
    One of the main differences between copyrights and patents is that in order to infringe on a copyright, you have to be willfully imitating it. Coincidentally creating an identical work is not copyright violation if you didn't know about it.
    - goodness 17y ago
      I'm no lawyer, but that doesn't seem consistent with any other law in the US. Ignorance is never an excuse. Also, the first result from a google search for 'copyright infringement willful' yields this: http://www.ladas.com/NII/CopyrightInfringement.html which says: 'Copyright infringement is determined without regard to the intent or the state of mind of the infringer; "innocent" infringement is infringement nonetheless.' As with patents though, I think the intent does play a role in determining damages.
      - gojomo 17y ago
        But coincidence is not copying. The quote you've excerpted is when someone actually copies something, but thought it was alright to do so.
Mark_B 17y ago
As an aside, just in case anybody is interested (as I was), here's the scoop on the Happy Bday copyright from Snopes: http://www.snopes.com/music/songs/birthday.asp http://www.snopes.com/music/songs/birthday.asp

28 points by yannis 17y ago

"...was the product of intense creative labor" I don't mean to downplay the amount of work that goes in to writing a song, but this seems a bit over the top. Short little melodies like this are trivial to write. My pre-school age children come up with these all the time. The tune of Happy Birthday doesn't seem particularly catchy to me. We've just heard it repeated so many times.

anamax 17y ago
> I don't mean to downplay the amount of work that goes in to writing a song, but this seems a bit over the top. Short little melodies like this are trivial to write. My pre-school age children come up with these all the time. > The tune of Happy Birthday doesn't seem particularly catchy to me. We've just heard it repeated so many times. Read the story. The authors actually did a lot of work on Happy Birthday. (They had a couple of conflicting goals and did a lot of testing.) While short little melodies are trivial to write, HB isn't just any short little melody. Disagree? Come up with a few that work as well. Riches await.
- goodness 17y ago
  I read the story. It claims to be "a product of a highly focused, laborious effort to write a song that was extremely simple to sing yet musically interesting and emotionally expressive, undertaken by a composer and an educator who happened to be sisters." I still don't really buy that it was "laborious effort." And I don't think the song is popular because of some fantastic musical merits. If the song was still "good morning to all" then it would be just another song. The only reason it has any monetary value is because it became associated with birthdays.
  - anamax 17y ago
    > I still don't really buy that it was "laborious effort." Having read accounts of said effort, I wonder what you think qualifies as laborious. They did days of testing with groups of kids. > And I don't think the song is popular because of some fantastic musical merits. And no one said that it has fantastic musical merits. Instead, they say that it has fantastic kid music merits. That's a hard market to crack. Lots of people try to write Barney, but few actually pull it off. There are lots of songs that could have become the standard. That one did, by design and labor.

LucaDuval 17y ago

I remember reading a sci-fi novel that impressed me as a child about the wife of a recently deceased composer corrupting a politician to not vote for a proposal to extend the copyright on the basis that there are only a limitited number of possible "interesting" combinations of notes. Hence an unlimited copyright is like a death sentence to the creativity of all future musicians. I believe that the actual limit of 50 years is already too much.

goodness 17y ago
I wonder why there aren't copyright trolls similar to patent trolls. They could just release huge libraries of computer generated music with all of these interesting combinations of notes. Then do automated comparisons of popular songs to find "violations." Could also be another one of those cases of getting an absurd law revoked by exercising it.
- lmkg 17y ago
  One of the main differences between copyrights and patents is that in order to infringe on a copyright, you have to be willfully imitating it. Coincidentally creating an identical work is not copyright violation if you didn't know about it.
  - goodness 17y ago
    I'm no lawyer, but that doesn't seem consistent with any other law in the US. Ignorance is never an excuse. Also, the first result from a google search for 'copyright infringement willful' yields this: http://www.ladas.com/NII/CopyrightInfringement.html which says: 'Copyright infringement is determined without regard to the intent or the state of mind of the infringer; "innocent" infringement is infringement nonetheless.' As with patents though, I think the intent does play a role in determining damages.
    - gojomo 17y ago
      But coincidence is not copying. The quote you've excerpted is when someone actually copies something, but thought it was alright to do so.

Mark_B 17y ago

As an aside, just in case anybody is interested (as I was), here's the scoop on the Happy Bday copyright from Snopes: http://www.snopes.com/music/songs/birthday.asp http://www.snopes.com/music/songs/birthday.asp