14 November: On this day in 1951, the first regular UK singles chart was published. From QI Series B, Episode 11 - 'Beats' With Mark Gatiss, Sean Lock, Linda Smith and Alan Davies For more visit qi.com
Duncan Ellis It only became an issue to be ruled on because the company became too greedy and tried to enforce their copyright too aggressively, had they shut up and kept on taking their cut only for major productions, as before, they would probably still be collecting royalties in the US. There is something delicious about them losing their cash-cow due to trying to charge a low budget filmmaker $1500 to make a documentary about the history of the song, and in the process the filmmaker discovered that the song was not able to be copyrighted in 1924 after all because it already existed. Warner, however was no longer content with just films and were wanting to charge restaurants and other public venues if a family sang the song and just one person (whether friend or staff) who was not a family member joined in the singing. They shot themselves in the foot when their greed started making people angry.
@@artistjoh It's a "Golden Goose/Dog's Reflection" scenario...that's what makes it so good; it's a scenario we have all been warned against as children with fables.
@Trevor for President True: "The song is in the public domain in the United States and the European Union. Warner Chappell Music had previously claimed copyright on the song in the US and collected licensing fees for its use; in 2015 the copyright claim was declared invalid and Warner Chappell agreed to pay back $14 million in licensing fees." en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Birthday_to_You
@Trevor for President It's not false. The reason it entered the public domain is becuase it was published in the American Song Book. At the time, copyright notices had to also be written with the published song. It was not. As a result, it entered the public domain. Warner tried to hoodwink the courts be supplying doctored pages from the Songbook, but got caught. The internet subsequently found addition editions of the Songbook prior to the evidence supplied by Warner. Totally true. Happy Birthday is now public domain. N.B. This has to do with the words to the Song BTW as several songs share the same melody.
@Trevor for President Warner had been charging yes. The would have known it was most likely it was PD as evidenced by their doctoring of the image from American Song Book (all thw words perfecfly clear, but the header where the name and copyright notice if pixelated, oh please!) I work in the music rights industry. They likely knew. They lied to the court and they got caught. Music doesn't enter the PD becuase they were caught, it's in the PD from the point it reverts to PD in time. Unfortunately, Licensors don't often know what they actually own. We often get claims they (Licensors in general) own something, only for the real rights holder to put in a claim...at which time they roll over and stop taking the license fees that they were happily receiving in error. That whole area is one massive mess.
They use "He's a Jolly Good Fellow" in most Hollywood productions because it is far older, hence no copyright, hence they don't need to pay anybody. Eg. the last scene of Godfather part II.
My father told me that, in the latter1920s and early 1930s, when he was in grade school, they sang :Good Morning to You" and then, they seated themselves and said, "We're all in our places with bright, shiny faces".
@@zapkvr Leonard Cohen wrote Hallelujah. Admittedly his version was pretty terrible and Jeff Buckley's was way better but we were talking about "who wrote the words" so...
I think for he's a jolly good fellow was sung by people before Happy Birthday. I remember hearing that somewhere. Someone down lower said it was for Hollywood copyright reasons but it may have been earlier than that.
Get the original version, in the bit where it goes "Happy Birthday Dear..............". It was someone who knew that person who wrote the song, easy peasy.
The sad thing was it never even lapsed. People had to sue Warner music in order for judges to officially rule it was no-longer in copyright, and Warner continuing to claim it was amounted to them essentially being a copyright troll. Multi-billion dollar corporations. Lovely bunch, aren't they?
I don't think there's ever been any "wrongerer" (Stephen) QI clip. It was written in 1893, not 1924, it has been Happy Birthday to You since at least 1912 if not longer, and Warner bought the company which was thought to own the copyright for $25 m (the song itself was estimated to be worth $5 m, not 28.) The question was interesting, at least... :-)
well that’s the idea! many times they bring up old ‘facts’ that have since been updated in the following series, they’ve said many times how a fact has a half life of about 2 to 10 years
Quite interesting to compare this clip to the wiki page of the song and see how many inaccuracies there are in the clip. Although to be fair, many of the facts dredged up for the court cases will not have been known at the time.
So these two women didn't even invent the words (not that there are all that many of them), they just composed the tune. Wish I could get $28,000,000 from writing a tune that simple.
That song was originally called “feuding Banjos” by Fiddlin’ Arthur Smith (not to be confused with Accountant Arthur Smith or Blacksmith Arthur Smith). The producers of the movie figured he was an uneducated hillbilly and if they changed a note or two and the name to ‘Dueling Banjos’ they could screw him out of the royalties by saying it was a different tune. However, Fiddlin’ Arthur wasn’t as uneducated as they thought. With the help of a lawyer, probably called Lawyerin’ Arthur Smith, he took the movie producers to court and nailed their asses to the wall. For years later ol’ Fiddlin’ Arthur would take friends into his new west wing on his house ( fully paid for) and play music, referring to the new wing as the Deliverance Wing. And that’s why in movie credits now, any piece of music longer than 30 seconds used in the movie is listed, along with the artist and songwriters and the publishing company who has been paid royalties
Because there's a ridiculously long period on copyrighted music-something like 75 years after the death of the composer. But just in the past year or two, Warner's claim on the copyright was ruled invalid, because the man they bought it from didn't have a legal right to the copyright because the song had at some point slipped into the public domain.
More not quite right information from QI. Warners paid 25 million dollars for the company that owned, among other things, the copyright for 'Happy Birthday to You'. QI is a good comedy show but it's research is abysmal.
