which you change the lyrics (except for celebrant's name) and/or tune,
then you have a good fight available.
Why? Because "Good Morning to You," which is a nearly identical tune
to Happy Birthday, is public domain (it is, in fact, what the Hill
sisters based their version of the song on). It is the same, except
that in Happy Birthday, the first note of each line is two eights
instead of a quarter note (i.e., it is two beats instead of one).
For instance, "Happy Birthday to you, you live in a zoo" ought to be
defensible in court. After all, it is parody, among other reasons.
But I'm not a lawyer and if you get sued for it, your defense had
better not be "But mortaine said it was okay!"
Although.... does anyone want to do a parody-birthday song
collaborative project? THAT would be a fun Videoblogging promo and
would have the added benefit of giving back to the world (people could
email it to their favorite birthday person) and risk us all getting
sued by Time/Warner and getting tons and tons of publicity for
vlogging as a result.
--Stephanie
On 8/6/05, Joshua Kinberg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Here's the story of the happy birthday song:
> http://www.snopes.com/music/songs/birthday.htm
--
Stephanie Bryant
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.mortaine.com
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