From: Lee Daniel Crocker (lee@piclab.com)
Date: Tue Jun 18 2002 - 12:43:45 MDT
> (Mike Lorrey <mlorrey@datamann.com>):
>
> As your statements are, apparently. In fact, you can sing "Happy
> Birthday" in public, you just can't use it as a practice of a profit
> making venture, like, say, a restaurant presenting a birthday cake to a
> customer while being serenaded by the employees singing the song. In the
> same situation, it is perfectly legal if all of the clientele in the
> restaurant sang Happy Birthday, but the employees and management cannot.
It really isn't that simple. ANY "public performance", for profit or
otherwise, is covered as an exclusive right under copyright. That's why
you see Shakespeare in the park but rarely Eugene O'Neill in the park;
even if they're doing it for free, it can be an infringement. Now the
reality of law is that you're not going to be sued unless the plaintiff
thinks he can make some money doing it, so as a practical matter one
can sing Happy Birthday in public without much concern. But it is
still strictly speaking an infringement. One can also get out of some
infringements under "fair use", and profit is ONE of several factors
used to determine fair use.
And anyway, why is it so easy for a capitalist like yourself to simply
accept a law that forbids a profit-making activity but not the same
activity for free? An activity should be either legal or illegal based
on other factors, shouldn't it? And if it's legal, shouldn't it also
be legal to profit from it? Clearly what you're doing is not protecting
the /rights/ of the author, but the /market/ of the author, and that
sure smells like a subsidy to me. As a capitalist myself, I have to
assume that such a subsidy is wrong unless I hear /very/ good reasons
for it.
-- Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/> "All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past, are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC
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