The next time you’re at a chain restaurant for someone’s birthday and the wait staff all gather round your table to do that particular chain restaurant’s birthday song, (you know, the doofus quasi-cheer with a lot of clapping parts and mildly bored faces “Ooah, ooah! It’s your birthday!” clap clap clap) remember this- it’s not some sort of homey tradition or endearing display of esprit de corps. It’s most likely a corporate directive to not, repeat, NOT sing Happy Birthday.
Happy Birthday, written in 1893, is still under copyright and is not a cheap purchase. That’s why you rarely hear Happy Birthday completely sung in a movie or on TV- it’s too expensive to use and too dangerous to try to sneak in.
Happy Birthday owes its long copyright life to, among a few other bizarre factors, the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act of U.S. Congress, 1998. Bono was a copyright holder of many titles including I Got You Babe. Of I Got You Babe he said “I was just trying to sound like Dylan.” Hum it in your head, it’s hilarious!
Till the Bono Act the limited duration monopoly that defines copyright was the creator’s lifetime plus 50 years. It probably would have stayed at 50 if “Steamboat Willie” wasn’t about to fall into the Public Domain. That’s right. Mickey Mouse, Disney’s corporate logo, mascot, and number one star was about to become the property of everyone in the world, not just Disney. There were a lot of other lobbyists for sure, but Disney had the most at stake.
Like Sonny Bono and Disney I hold copyrights. And I’d like to see them retain as much value as possible. But the complete flipside to this way of thinking is the Internet’s premise that “Information needs to be free.” That we will all profit from the free exchange of information, ideas and even the free exchange of artistically creative works. On a philosophical level I agree. However, I think it’s essential for there to be a system of monetary incentive for people to continue to create music. And I do like getting credit for the music I write, and I do like the concept of my kids still cashing cheques earned by their old man’s music long after I’m gone.
But, then I think of the lyrics for Happy Birthday. They will have generated about $4,000,000 more for its publishers from now until the time its copyright lapses in 2008.
You’ll have to sing them through in your head because I can’t afford to type them here.
Go figure.
