Gary Jones wrote:

> "Happy Birthday", copyright 1935, has had its copyright renewed.

Under modern law, a copyright cannot be "renewed" any more, and
under the law at the time "Happy Birthday" was written, it could
only be renewed once, in 1952.

"Happy Birthday's" copyright was scheduled to expire at Dec 31st of
last year unless Congress passed another continuing resolution to
extend copyrights yet again -- something they have done several times
as they monkey with the copyright laws (the idea being to keep anything
from falling into public domain that will still be covered under any
new copyright law, since Title 17 provides no mechanism for retrieving
material once it has fallen into the public domain).

_However_, Congress did not, to my knowledge, pass such a resolution
last year, which means that "Happy Birthday" _should_ now be in the
public domain -- finally.  However, it would be wise to research this
before assuming it to be so, since Congress has often been very quiet
about their copyright activities and it's possible, though unlikely,
that I missed the resolution in the usual congressional clutter.

> That's why restaurants with waiters who sing to you on your birthday
> sometimes use a "corporate" birthday tune instead.  They're not
> paying the license fee.

One restaurant did get sued by the copyright holder, hence the spate
of corporate birthday songs.  This was also the reason for the
"Birthday Wish" song in the movie "The Wizard of Speed and Time".  The
song was dedicated to the public domain by Mike Jittlov, the writer,
specifically as a replacement for "Happy Birthday", as I recall.

Incidentally, the copyright for "Happy Birthday" does not _read_ "Happy
Birthday".  The song was originally copyrighted "Good Morning to All",
a classic example of how little "creativity" was needed to qualify for
copyright status.

> Also, the first time _anyone_ has _any_ work _they've_ copyrighted,
> written, or published, their attitude about all this hassle changes
> immediately!!

That's funny.  It didn't happen for me.  Or Linus Torvalds.
Or Richard Stallman.  Or Larry Wall...

Larry Smith