The myth of the pre-1923 public domain

[horndude77]

http://blog.librarylaw.com/librarylaw/2 ... omain.html

The exception this article mentions probably doesn't affect anything here on IMSLP. But it does show how difficult it is to determining the public-domain status of some items.

[steltz]

Just to add a technical point, but also something to bear in mind when trying to establish copyright, is that in the case from that article, only the words to Happy Birthday To You were under copyright, not the tune, which existed previously (I think the words were "Good Morning To You").

The only reason I know this is that when I was in college in LA, I worked as a technical advisor on a film set, and my job was to try to get an actor to fake playing the flute. The music used in the scene was "Happy Birthday To You". The reason they wrote the scene with the family playing instead of singing was to save on copyright fees!!!

So in addition to establishing if the first printed edition was authorized, there can be separate copyright restrictions for the words as opposed to the tune.

[Carolus]

The sensational headline is way over the top. 99.5% of the time, the "myth" is true. Yes, unauthorized publications don't count. That's why Soviet editions of later Stravinsky works like Orpheus are still not legal in the USA. I actually thought he was going to discuss the crazy ruling by the Ninth Circuit that foreign works going back to 1909 could be protected if they never saw distribution in the USA. I posted the original publication info on the melody (which he oddly forgot to mention) over at his blog.