Well now JC has piqued my interest. I can't see how a person can copyright
happy birthday. That's crazy. Music should be like software.
Suppose I write a computer program in Perl that compresses files. I start
to sell my program. If I copyright the program, no one else is allowed to
sell it except me. However, it does not prevent a person from writing a
program in C, using the general ideas from my Perl program. The copyright
does not cover the idea, it only covers the specific expression of the
idea. To protect the idea, I must have a patent.
So in music, a melody is only an "idea". Making a photocopy of "Happy
Birthday" from someone's book is different from writing an ABC file with
the Happy Birthday melody from memory. If you want to protect the idea of
happy birthday, you need a patent, not a copyright.
John Henckel alt. mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Zumbro Falls, Minnesota, USA (507) 753-2216
http://geocities.com/jdhenckel/
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