I'm sure I will feel differently when I'm a rich and famous cartoonist whose characters are a multi-million-dollar commodity, but for now, I'm a little perturbed about the status of copyrights in the United States. The whole reason we have copyrights is because "the founding fathers recognized that everyone would benefit if creative people were encouraged to create new intellectual and artistic works. When the United States Constitution was written in 1787, the framers took care to include a copyright clause (Article I, Section 8) giving Congress the power to 'promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts' by passing laws that give creative artists (called 'Authors' in the Constitution) the exclusive right to their own artistic works for a limited period of time." [
source]
Yes, that's right: a limited period of time. Just as inventors only get to hold on to their patents for a set number of years, so was the intention of the original copyright law. It was to encourage artists to create new works, not to make their great-grandchildren rich (which is why, in the early 1900s, copyrights only lasted 28 years plus a renewal period of an additional 28 years).
But today, a copyright lasts for 70 years after the death of its creator. The creator can transfer the rights to someone else, and usually does, to have it published. In almost all cases, the publisher owns the rights to the work, and have signed contracts on file stating such. I work for a music publisher, and that's how we do it; without a publisher, there would be no one to print it for the composer and distribute it to dealers that sell it. (Of course, there are also "vanity publishers," where the author pays them to publish their book; I'm not sure how their contracts work.) In this case, the copyright lasts 95 years from the date of publication.
That is to say, the moment you turn an idea into a "tangible medium," you own the rights to that work, and the rights will follow you to the grave and stay there for 70 years, at which point they will be resurrected and enter the Heaven of Creative Works, also known as the "public domain." But if you publish your work -- that is, allow it to be seen by others on an unrestricted basis -- then the copyright rests with the publisher for 95 years. And once some famous pieces of music come up for expiration somewhere around the year 2018, I'm sure Congress will once again step up to the plate and decree that copyrights of published works *now* will last 200 years, just to ensure that no one misses out on the vast wealth of their great-great-great-great-grandparent's estate.
The estate of Irving Berlin is one of the more vicious ones, not that I really blame them; the law entitles them to do as they please with Berlin's music, and Congress keeps extending the number of years in which they can exploit the man's work for their own gain. (Trust me, it has very little to do with "protecting the integrity of his work" or "continuing his legacy" or any of the other BS they use to justify their greed.) They also enjoy gobbling up the rights to other songs like
Silver Bells, and while they'll allow you to record an arrangement of the piece, they won't let you publish the sheet music for it. Same deal for
White Christmas. Why they'll accept royalties for recordings but not sheet music, I'm not exactly sure.
Anyway, what made me get on this tangent today was a discussion of the copyright of
Happy Birthday. To make a long story short, any time you publicly perform or publish an arrangement of
Happy Birthday, if you do it legally with permission, you're lining the pockets of AOL Time Warner executives. How? Well, the composers of
Good Morning To All, Mildred and Patty Hill, had a sister, Jessica, who took the matter to court in order to secure the copyright for her sisters. Despite the fact that neither Hill sister wrote the lyrics we now know as
Happy Birthday To You, and the tune itself was most likely a folksong that existed years earlier with different lyrics (such as "Happy Greetings To All"), they won the case and, in 1935, got Clayton F. Summy Company to publish the song in order to register the copyright. John F. Sengstack bought the company in the 1930s and renamed it Birch Tree Ltd. in the 1970s, then sold it to Warner-Chappell in 1998, at which point it was renamed Summy-Birchard Music. Warner-Chappell, of course, is a division of Warner Communications, which became AOL Time Warner in January of 2001.
So in order for my company to publish a string method book this year containing an arrangement of
Happy Birthday, we had to seek permission from Summy-Birchard Music, pay them royalties based on the quantity we sell, and include their copyright notice on the music.
It wouldn't bother me quite so much if the Hill sisters had in fact penned the song we all know as
Happy Birthday To You, but it's entirely possible that they did *not* write the original tune, and it's plainly clear that no one knows who wrote the current lyrics, and in any case, the tune itself *should* be in the public domain, but is not, because Jessica Hill won the court case that ascribed ownership of the tune and lyrics to her sisters. Just because they were the first to make the song popular (and it apparently *wasn't* popular until someone added new lyrics) does not mean they should have the rights to it, nor the publishing rights. Since copyright law was still in its infancy at the time, it's not so surprising that a folksong slipped through the cracks into the world of copyrighted material, but that little slip has grown into an annual 2-million-dollar enterprise for AOL Time Warner, and it'll last at least until the year 2030. I'm not sure how reliable
this source is, but it does give more perspective on the legal issues (assuming it's accurate).
Similarly, Homer Rodeheaver was the first to formally publish many church hymns of his time, such as
In The Garden. Songs which had been sung for years in worship services suddenly became copyrighted and profitable commodities because he compiled them into his own hymnal. To this day, Rodeheaver Music Co. owns the rights to
In The Garden and many other hymns most of us would assume are too old *not* to be in the public domain. But thanks to Homer and our beloved Congress that gleefully ignores the true original purpose of copyright law, such songs will probably be exploited for their monetary value until the end of time. God Bless America.*
*The phrase God Bless America
is a registered copyright of the estate of Irving Berlin. Hopefully, I won't get sued.
