<story><title>Unhappy Birthday</title><url>http://www.unhappybirthday.com/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>anigbrowl</author><text>Oh please, your position is very popular in this industry, as you acknowledge in your third line. I think &lt;i&gt;Happy Birthday&lt;/i&gt; is very much out of copyright, but I don&amp;#x27;t agree that &amp;#x27;copyright is a legal fiction created by congress that exists solely to prop up industries.&amp;#x27;&lt;p&gt;Example,  I mentioned elsewhere that I&amp;#x27;m working on producing a screenplay which involves the &lt;i&gt;Happy Birthday&lt;/i&gt; song. I&amp;#x27;m not enthused about having to budget for license fees for this. On the other hand, without copyright I would not be able to share the script with other people to get feedback or solicit their interest in making it into a film, because I would have no way to protect my interests as an author. From my point of view the screenplay represents about 4 months&amp;#x27; worth of labor, and it will likely be 6 months&amp;#x27; worth by the time it&amp;#x27;s at a final draft. As director of the project, that total labor involved will rise to well over a year&amp;#x27;s worth, more likely two. My ownership interest in the intellectual property is the only hope I have of making money off that investment later on should the film get made and prove popular.&lt;p&gt;If you don&amp;#x27;t believe in copyright, what do you think is my economic incentive to create original work, or anyone else&amp;#x27;s to commission&amp;#x2F;purchase such work?</text></item><item><author>sneak</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s unpopular in our industry, but I personally don&amp;#x27;t believe in ownership of ideas or information.&lt;p&gt;When someone can tell me who owns the number 2, I will tell you who owns our cultural heritage of songs.&lt;p&gt;Remember: copyright is a legal fiction created by congress that exists solely to prop up industries. Most people don&amp;#x27;t believe in it, as evidenced by the massive sharing of information on the internet condemned by it.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>white-flame</author><text>The two natural states of &amp;quot;intellectual property&amp;quot; are public domain and trade secret.  Everything else exists only because of legal systems creating new concepts.&lt;p&gt;My problem is that copyright is misapplied:&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;  &amp;quot;To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times
  to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and
  Discoveries.&amp;quot;
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
To my understanding, congress has no authority to issue copyright legalities for things which do not advance science and the useful arts (practical industry, etc).  Happy Birthday does not fall under either of those categories.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;If you don&amp;#x27;t believe in copyright, what do you think is my economic incentive to create original work, or anyone else&amp;#x27;s to commission&amp;#x2F;purchase such work?&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Plenty of works are created without direct economic incentive associated with copying the work.  Just look at non-commercial YouTubers or open source projects.  Music, movies, etc, still come into being.  Personally, I would trade the existence of higher-production media for more sane copyright laws.</text></comment>
<story><title>Unhappy Birthday</title><url>http://www.unhappybirthday.com/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>anigbrowl</author><text>Oh please, your position is very popular in this industry, as you acknowledge in your third line. I think &lt;i&gt;Happy Birthday&lt;/i&gt; is very much out of copyright, but I don&amp;#x27;t agree that &amp;#x27;copyright is a legal fiction created by congress that exists solely to prop up industries.&amp;#x27;&lt;p&gt;Example,  I mentioned elsewhere that I&amp;#x27;m working on producing a screenplay which involves the &lt;i&gt;Happy Birthday&lt;/i&gt; song. I&amp;#x27;m not enthused about having to budget for license fees for this. On the other hand, without copyright I would not be able to share the script with other people to get feedback or solicit their interest in making it into a film, because I would have no way to protect my interests as an author. From my point of view the screenplay represents about 4 months&amp;#x27; worth of labor, and it will likely be 6 months&amp;#x27; worth by the time it&amp;#x27;s at a final draft. As director of the project, that total labor involved will rise to well over a year&amp;#x27;s worth, more likely two. My ownership interest in the intellectual property is the only hope I have of making money off that investment later on should the film get made and prove popular.&lt;p&gt;If you don&amp;#x27;t believe in copyright, what do you think is my economic incentive to create original work, or anyone else&amp;#x27;s to commission&amp;#x2F;purchase such work?</text></item><item><author>sneak</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s unpopular in our industry, but I personally don&amp;#x27;t believe in ownership of ideas or information.&lt;p&gt;When someone can tell me who owns the number 2, I will tell you who owns our cultural heritage of songs.&lt;p&gt;Remember: copyright is a legal fiction created by congress that exists solely to prop up industries. Most people don&amp;#x27;t believe in it, as evidenced by the massive sharing of information on the internet condemned by it.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>copsarebastards</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t think copyright is a fiction (I&amp;#x27;m not even sure what that means) but I&amp;#x27;m pretty sure it &lt;i&gt;is&lt;/i&gt; there to prop up industries, such as yours, that would be financially insolvent without it. sneak perhaps intended this with a negative connotation, but that connotation isn&amp;#x27;t necessary. Copyright is there to prop up industries, but whether that&amp;#x27;s a good or bad thing is still up for debate.&lt;p&gt;I agree with your argument within the economic context in which your work occurs, it&amp;#x27;s the only thing that makes many works of art possible. But copyright is a bad thing because the economic context is bad.&lt;p&gt;If you had all the money you needed, would you stop producing screenplays? I can&amp;#x27;t answer for you, but I know the answer for me: if I had all the money I needed, I wouldn&amp;#x27;t stop writing code or performing music. I think the idea that people need economic incentives to do things, &lt;i&gt;especially&lt;/i&gt; creative things, is bogus. People don&amp;#x27;t need incentives to do things, they need their basic needs met so that they &lt;i&gt;can&lt;/i&gt; do things. More often than not, the need to fulfill their basic needs gets in the way of people doing the things that they want, and which might prove the most beneficial. I&amp;#x27;ve certainly written reams of useless code to pay the bills instead of open source work that I wanted to do to further humanity. And I&amp;#x27;m sure you&amp;#x27;ve spent time doing things to pay the bills when you could have been working on your screenplay.&lt;p&gt;Of course we don&amp;#x27;t live in a world where people&amp;#x27;s needs can simply be met without effort. But the time is coming when no human will have to lift a finger to survive. What incentive will exist then? The structures we have built around the need to earn our survival will prepare us poorly for the world that will be.&lt;p&gt;I see two futures: one where the robots and artificial intelligences that meet all our needs are owned by the people who bought them and the rest of us are beholden to them, and another where, in the absence of value derived by economic need, we derive value from our feelings, our experiences, our relationships, and our creations. Copyright lives in the former future: the future I want is the latter.</text></comment>