That'll teach Woody Guthrie to stay off of my lawn

[andrew_jorgensen]

I'm sure that by now everyone has seen the jibjab Flash animation of George Bush and John Kerry singing "This Land Is My Land." Well, according to No Rock & Roll Fun, its makers are being sued for breach of copyright. This brings up the vexing question: "This Land Is My Land" isn't public domain yet? And the vexing answer: anything younger than Mickey Mouse will always be covered by copyright laws as long as Disney can pay their lawyers. In any case, it's a fair case for sardonicism that every American second-grader's introduction to a socialist disregard for individual property should provide the occasion for a ridiculous overapplication of intellectual property law; and, indeed, Woody Guthrie himself said, back when Mickey Mouse was, oh, my guess is 28 years old, "This song is copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright #154085, for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin it without our permission, will be mighty good friends of ourn, cause we don't give a dern. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that's all we wanted to do."

Comments

[nzraya.livejournal.com]

D00d/. That sucks monkey balls, because if EVER there was a fair use of any song? That animation is SO IT.

[dherblay.livejournal.com]

Dude.

Hee. sucks monkey balls..

[midnightsjane.livejournal.com]

I have the oddest picture in my head now. Saw the animation the other day, and just laughed and laughed.

d'H!

[atpotch.livejournal.com]

I was wondering where you were. Admittedly that's pretty rich coming from somebody who makes episodes of Angel seem regularly spaced, but it's good to see you.

TCH

Re: d'H!

[dherblay.livejournal.com]

I've been here all this time. I've left the occasional comment! I do admit that for one night there it looked like people would see more of me on the board than on LJ, but that doesn't seem to have lasted.

[cactuswatcher.livejournal.com]

The music industry's recent snit over copyright laws is certain to backfire on them sooner or later. It's obvious that the rights to any number of older tunes are questionable at best. I remember hearing that when John Lennon was still alive he owned many song copyrights, and that for example he was being paid a royalty every time the Georgia Tech band played it's fight song "The Ramblin' Wreck." The tune is actually a hundreds of years old Irish ditty, so how the heck can it be under copyright? Because someone in the stands might sing the words which are/were copyrighted. Why the heck the rights to even the words didn't expire long before John Lennon ever bought them is something you should ask your congressman. The obvious solution is to stop the insane renewing of copyrights for old old songs and go to the life of the writer plus-fifty-years system now in place for books, then someone might have a chance of not violating someone else's rights.

The lawyers for JibJab are claiming fair-use, but it will probably cost them plenty to make their point in court. Certainly the music industry is wasting more in lawyer's fees on this than they'd have ever gotten, from any royalty JibJab and a hundred like them might have paid.

In the end, just like Apple Computers' silly law suits in the late 1980's, they'll pick on someone, who'll fight back and the music industry will lose, and this nonsense will stop, but it will cost someone.

[dherblay.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm going to go way out on a limb here and say, without any real evidence, that I probably listen to a lot more sample-driven music than you do, so my concept of what should be considered musical "fair use" is a lot more generous than life plus fifty.

I have a feeling that the RIAA's campaign for expansive intellectual property protection is unsustainable right now. Its been a while since I was familiarized with the corporate web of the music industry, but it seems to me that a large amount of the marketplace is controlled by Sony and Time Warner. While both are party to the RIAA on the one hand, on the other Sony now sells MP3 players and Time Warner markets broadband connections. Sooner or later, I think, they'll realize that there's more profit to be made with the left hand than by protecting their recordings with the right. And at that point they'll stop looking at downloading as so sinister.

[cactuswatcher.livejournal.com]

my concept of what should be considered musical "fair use" is a lot more generous than life plus fifty.

As someone who might want to play my musical instrument in public with out getting hassled, I tend to agree. I'm just asking for some kind of uniformity. It's unfair to make someone else guess whether the copyrights were renewed or even renewed properly, when no doubt many of them haven't been. I've seen copyrights in recent music books dating back to about 1910. According to the way it used to be, those should be public domain, now. If copyrights can be periodically renewed forever now, it's Congress' fault.

[rebekahroxanna.livejournal.com]

Let's see, I think it is a parody of the song. The American Indian makes it an obvious parody. In any event, thanks for pointing me towards it. I have now shared it with all my Luddite friends, though in reading one of the links, I find I should have known about it weeks ago. Oh well. BTW, not every second grader had your introduction to socialism. I think the song is probably never sung in any red state (are the Republicans red? I can never keep it straight. I think the Republicans are red cause that's so ironic. But I suppose with the demise of the Soviet Union it's OK now.)

[dherblay.livejournal.com]

Well, I was in second grade during the tail end of the Carter Administration, so it may have just been a more socialist time, as well as place.

Everyone knows that they're the red states because of the farmer's tans.

[ann1962]

And the few blue bits here and there are the varicose veins popping out from the stress of being within the red areas!

NE here!

[arethusa2.livejournal.com]

My kids are taught the song at school here in Texas, although I think the legislature also requires all schoolchildren to say the pledges of allegiance to America and to *Texas*, believe it or not. (Dunno why, maybe DeLay want to succeed from the union and is worried that his loyal victims constituites won't agree. I'm quite sure that when he hears "this land was made for you and me" what he's actually hearing is "this land was made by you for me.")

[yhlee.livejournal.com]

Oh, man! I had vaguely assumed that the song was either old enough, or that their use was covered by parody. On the other hand, I am so not a legal expert on anything. Yeep.

[dherblay.livejournal.com]

As far as I'm concerned, it is fair use; but there's money to be made, I guess.

[granpa-pete.livejournal.com]

The problem, I believe, is that there are now two americas -- one for "you" and one for "me".