Happy birthday to the song <i>Happy Birthday to You</i>. Today is, literally, the birthday of the world's best-known song. It is 120 years old. And it is the showpiece illustration of how intellectual property laws can become so unwieldy, so silly and so ultimately harmful to the public that they deserve to be vastly overhauled or scrapped entirely to allow a fresh start.
Happy Birthday, the song, is copyrighted. A huge corporation collects, very roughly, 65 million baht a year in various currencies, in royalties. Every time the song is played or sung in public, the singers or players owe a fee to Warner/Chappell Music. Like all royalties, fees for singing the lyrics ''Happy Birthday to you ...'' vary widely, but they are high enough and troublesome enough to make commercial ventures pause. Last year, a soap opera production skipped singing Happy Birthday at a fictional party rather than pay.
Just who will be charged for singing this song is somewhat vexing at the moment. There is no charge to sing it to a relative in the home; that is known as ''fair use''. But the singing of the song in that soap opera is an obvious commercial use and therefore billable. But bills were sent to the Girl Scouts of America for singing the song at a campfire gathering, and the copyright owners claim they will try to bill every restaurant and bar where the staff serenades a customer.
The other view, however, is that the song is not copyrighted at all, and that Warner/Chappell is, to be kind, acting illegally if not committing extortion. A US film company, Good Morning To You Productions Corp, is making a documentary about the song. As part of its production, it is suing the alleged song owners, asking the court to remove the copyright officially, and return the song to where common sense says it belongs - the worldwide public.
The long and terrifically colourful history of Happy Birthday has been compiled by Robert Brauneis, a law professor at George Washington University. Fittingly, Prof Brauneis has made the 68-page history free for download in many places, such as goo.gl/h6LqGA. It is part of the lawsuit, which, unfortunately, must be heard in California, where law trumps justice so often. The New York Times calls it "a lawsuit for the ages".
Exaggeration aside, the legal case against Warner/Chappell Music illustrates the terrible state of today's intellectual property laws. It is clear that inventors and artists must be rewarded for their work. But ever-expanding protection of copyright, patents and trademarks are almost exclusively for big companies like Warner/Chappell, and almost never to protect the actual artists involved. Happy Birthday to You goes back to the song-writing sisters Mildred and Patty Hill, who are, of course, long dead and no longer dependent upon royalties from their song. Big Music, though, which has created nothing, will reap profits until at least 2030 for doing absolutely nothing except cashing cheques.
Unless the courts stop them. More importantly, however, legislators must stop giving free passes to big business and increasingly heavy penalties to the free market, particularly to small business, always called ''pirates''.
Under such legislation, Happy Birthday means receiving a bill for singing at the the colleague's party at work. Recently, ExxonMobil claimed to a judge it owns the world right to put two X's together, leaving us to wonder what Romans who were paid X or XXVI amount of baht per day down at the spa thought about it. Silly laws that protect Happy Birthday encouraged the movie director and all-round full-of-himself Spike Lee to claim he owned exclusive rights to the word ''spike''.
Big Music regularly targets small restaurants and bars for playing popular music. That is in Thailand, in the US, in Europe and elsewhere. By targeting a couple of small businesses, the music industry - not the artists - successfully intimidate all the other small businesses into paying up without protest. It's a white-collar version of "nice little restaurant you got here, be a shame if there was a fire or a copyright lawsuit".
Eventually, abuses of intellectual property laws will grow too onerous. Thailand already has protested and acted in the case of overly intrusive patents on needed medicine. But, for now, big business in general is profiting in areas where it has no logical right. No reasonable person denies an artist, an inventor or a merchant the right to profit from her song, her book, her new product or her identifying logo. But reasonableness is not returned. Rather, new bills are sent out for singing the birthday song.
Happy Birthday, you belong to everyone. A law that makes no sense, such as requiring payment to sing the world's most popular song, must be changed or simply abolished.