John Henckel wrote:
>
> 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.
It's not as simple as that. Some composer sat down for months - maybe
years - working had to create that tune, and it's only fair that he or
she should get some compensation for the work ;)
Seriously, there really are people out there trying to make a living
from the music they compose. And the only way to achieve that, is by
having people pay for it.
If the composers didn't get payed, they wouldn't have time to make
music. They'd be busy making a living instead.
Of course, the real issue is that Happy Birthday is to small a ditty to
be copyrighted, whereas - say Gershwin's "Rhapsody in blue" - isn't. But
where do we draw the line?
Frank Nordberg
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