Stephen Colbert Creates Royalty-Free Alternative To Happy Birthday For Happy Birthday's Happy Birthday
from the got-that? dept
For years, we’ve covered the insanity of Warner Music claiming to own the copyright on the song Happy Birthday — a claim that is finally being challenged in court because Warner’s claims are almost certainly bullshit, and the song should be in the public domain. The history of the copyright claim in the song is highly questionable, as the original “copyright holders” appear to have written neither the music nor the lyrics to “Happy Birthday,” and what they did write was widely used decades before any copyright claim was made. Still, Warner gets somewhere around $2 million each year licensing the song (making it the most valuable song ever) and has no intention of giving up that free revenue stream.
A year or so ago, the folks at the Free Music Archive and WFMU asked people to create a new royalty-free song to add to the countless variations that restaurants have come up with over the years to avoid paying Warner. Not surprisingly, the “winner” of that contest has yet to catch on.
However, last week was technically the 90th anniversary of the song’s “publication” date (from which the copyright claim comes, despite the song itself existing for decades prior). In response to this, Stephen Colbert did what Stephen Colbert does best, and mocked the ridiculous copyright situation by demonstrating that he was unable to “sing Happy Birthday for Happy Birthday’s Happy Birthday.” Instead, he decided to perform a new alternative, which he declares to be royalty-free for anyone to use, and basing it on the (public domain) melody of the American national anthem, The Star Spangled Banner (apologies ahead of time for those in various locations that Comedy Central geoblocks and who can’t see this video — I wish they didn’t, but they do):
Filed Under: copyright, happy birthday, stephen colbert
Companies: warner music
Comments on “Stephen Colbert Creates Royalty-Free Alternative To Happy Birthday For Happy Birthday's Happy Birthday”
There is a slight level of irony here in this, given the subject matter, that it is indeed geoblocked here.
Still at least the banner informing me of this has a level of humour higher than many such things which tend to be simply rude.
For the benefit of the USians out there:
Sorry but this video is unaviable from your location
Its one of the detriments from living under a monarchy. But in case you can’t give up on your silly accents and move to America…
And who says Americans don’t do irony.
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For us Aussies it says “…in case you can’t give up your vegemite…”
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For me (Ireland) it says “Allow us to introduce our much paler cousin, Comedy Central UK”
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It’s weird that it’s available in NZ. Normally we get the short end of the stick.
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For us Canucks, it’s blaming our overly polite attitudes.
In Quebec, they don’t sing Happy Birthday, but rather a reworked version of Gens du Pays, with words along the lines of “My dear ____, it’s your turn to let yourself talk about love”.
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For some reason the banner pissed me off more than just a “We refuse to show you this content because you’re outside the USA”
They should be honest about why they’re not showing us the video and not try and blame it on the user.
The banner closes with a request that us foreigners go to watch clips on their website. Not likely. Why would I bother when I haven’t seen this video? I’m told it was amusing and would have made me want to see more but I have no idea.
Grr.
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Here in the UK it says:
“Sorry this video is unavailable from your location.
It’s one of the detriments of living under a monarchy. But in case you can’t give up your silly accents and move to America, watch clips from the Colbert Report at comedycentral.co.uk”
‘Silly’ accents? That’s rich coming from a bunch of colonials! 🙂
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“Sorry this video is unavailable from your location.
It’s one of the detriments of living under a copyright regime where market segmentation is accepted as a right. But in case you can’t give up your silly accents and move to America, too bad.” 1 finger salute
FIFY
For those who can't watch it:
Here’s the lyrics.
Happy birthday to you
happy birthday to me
now we all get to sing
happy birthday for free
And the candle’s red glare
don’t set fire to your hair
you’re getting so old
and you’re shaped like a pear
Happy birthday insert name here
if you don’t know it just mumble softly
Warner music can’t sue me
and the home of the brave
Damn Geoblock.
http://bayimg.com/MaLCcaAFG
Canada: Probably due to your overly polite attitudes.
Was he trying to say “home of the free” at the end, since it rhymes with “sue me”? But I guess he changed it to the other one because he’s not actually free to sing Happy Birthday.
To bad the world couldn’t have made a day of it and publicly performed the song everywhere possible, on radio, television, the internet, public squares, etc. Love to see Warner try to sue hundreds of people over a 90 year old song being sung to Warner Brothers.
(Aren’t these media companies supposed to be dead by now?)
Blocked due to copyright and licensing
I?d love to see Colbert?s alternative, but it?s blocked due to copyright and licensing restrictions because I?m not in the US.
Perhaps Colbert could do a sketch about that, too.
God bless America and it?s business practices and laws.
Re: Blocked due to copyright and licensing
I?d love to see Colbert?s alternative, but it?s blocked due to copyright and licensing restrictions because I?m not in the US.
Perhaps Colbert could do a sketch about that, too.
For you to not watch? Wouldn’t really be in character anyway – his character doesn’t care about foreigners.
AUTOPLAY?
Ugh … please, please, please. Stephen Colbert is great and all but having to search through my tabs and then all the articles on a blog to figure out what damn video is PLAYING without me asking it to so is so frustrating at 7am. -_- Let’s prevent that from happening in the future, OK? Thank you.
What day is today
It’s Leela’s birthday
What a day for a birthday
Let’s all have some cake
Nothing dumber in the known universe than a copyright judge
They are even dumber than the Un-supreme court clowns.
It must be said. That was by far the most epic and awesome Happy Birthday song ever composed and performed.