Tuesday, September 27, 2005

Happy Natal Day To You (to the tune of )

This page quotes a couple of articles about a little copyright spat that happened back in 1996. Most people probably think this is ancient history, but it's worth pointing out that a) this was less than 10 years ago, and b) this clearly represents the agenda of the media industry -- get royalties any time copyrighted material is used anywhere, for any purpose. And if it means that the Girl Scouts can't sing "Happy Birthday" to someone because they can't afford it, well, shucks, it's not our fault you don't have the dough.

Although they ostensibly back off from suing the Girl Scouts in their "retraction", reading the fine print reveals they have no intention of backing off of anything. Who defines what "profitable" camps versus "unprofitable"? See any mention of an explicit revenue cap under which you won't get sued? I didn't either.

Happy f****** ********.

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