|
|
|
Distinguished Toastmaster
BUSINESS & BRANDING COACH . LIFE & LEADERSHIP STRATEGIST MOTIVATIONAL SPEAKER SERVING ENTREPRENEURS & MAIN STREET |
"HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU" DECISION SPELLS TROUBLE FOR ONLINERS CLAIMING PUBLIC DOMAIN AS THEIR OWN & PAIN FOR AUTHORS FIGHTING FOR THEIR BOOKS
|
|
Los Angeles U.S. District Court Judge GEORGE KING's judicial ruling of HAPPY BIRTHDAY being removed from Warner/Chappel to public domain and to repay royalties is a warning to all onlines claiming Public Domain images as their own Copyright to profit from.
It has become a horrible trend online for 3rd parties to Claim others work with a new copyright not the owners. Almost makes a Content Creator want to live forever to protect their heart's art. |
Public domain does not mean a landgrab for others content. It seems to have become so. Case in point "...(fill in the blank)... AND CARRY ON..." Now on everything inconceivable, even rude, the "...CARRY ON..." franchise began as a British military motivational that was re-discovered finding new life and profits online. And off.
Back to the Birthday Girls.
No proof was found the sisters behind the song gave the Music Publisher their right to assign and protect. Happy Birthday began as a poem written by Kentucky sisters Mildred & Patty Hill's "Good Morning to All" in a kindergarten songbook. The sisters had assigned to their publisher piano arrangements of their song & their rights to the song but not to the words which makes no sense since what is a song without words and what is a horse without a wagon. Contracts are contracts and bad contracts have a way of being broken. The sisters original publisher was SUMMY CO. that was acquired by WARNER/CHAPPEL.
Copyrights do not tranfer automatically with corporate acquisition although companies do presume, assume and threaten the content owner with legal battles if the content creator tries to argue before even fighting back, something I experienced personally with my book the "Handbook of Hebrew Calligraphy", a twenty year selling book written under my former married name.
My 1978 contract with JASON ARONSON PUBLISHING was acquired by ROWMAN LITTLEFIELD, a Landover Maryland based firm. Sorta. Corporations do seem to manage to have mirror lives in different states, each state offering a different pitch to landing that portion of the company there- taxes and all that stuff, you know.
JASON ARONSON was a Psych book publisher. My book was their attempt at infusing the Judaica market. And what a good choice, in books, Aronson made. My book remains top of its narrow specialty class, all these years laters. What remains in the toilet are my royalties. Call it creative accounting.
Rowman decided to start to count my royalties all over again, in 2004 or 5 or 3. Either which way, Rowman erased the history of my book that was published in 1990 or 1975 depending which online cite you read. This is important, you see, if the company falsely puts out my book was published 15 years before the actual date, the company is then pushing my book towards an early copyright grave, they think.
Not.
Royalties are almost non existent despite my book showing up online published around the world, after all, it is, still, the best of the hebrew calligraphy best. My book is published in the UK, other parts of the EU, Italy, Australia even Japan where copies can be bought for $400 not a dime of what I see. PDFs, downloads, even a "google copy" e-book managed by Hathi Trust is available.
I never allowed ebooks. I never allowed PDFs or downloads. Back in 1975 all I knew to allow were books of the old fashioned kind. But then there is that weird phrase that got stuck in the contract that back in the day didnt mean much when it talked about advancements in tech or such. I dunno. Would have to pull the damn contract out.
All I want is my royalties from 1990 to present date that included a step up in percentages when sales hit stated benchmarks. Didnt happen. Remember. A company that acquired a company rolled my contract back just like a car dealer rolls back the odometer on a car. Cars get the "Lemonade Law." Authors get, well,.... keeping it clean.... pulped, except I dont mean "pulped" I mean that hardware waord that starts with an "S" and ends with an "ED" and has a "Crew" in the middle.
Yeah, fighting back, or trying to, as a content creator does take on tones of a gang rape more often than not, leaving the creator bloodied with self esteem stolen.
More often than not the lawyers have no clue of what they are paid to fight for profit for. Remember, the Content Creator is still not getting paid while the lawyer gets a fee even if they fail.
My book? All I want to do is take it back, self publish it because the loss of goodwill at market is as damaging as the loss of royalties for all the books not sold the publisher alleges, well,..... what is the pinnochio max that one can give ever ever ever.
The copyright is mine. The Library of Congress says so. The e-book violation, by the way, was by the way of the Library of Congress who solicits, at least back then, hard copies of the book being copyrighted. The LOC says they do not allow commercialization of books in their protection but GOOGLE is public they scan everything short of boob and nobby sizes. They will get there too, in time. So the wasnt me's are the ones that coughed up my copyright and flung it to the world away from me so Kentucky sisters, I know your pain. I wish I could know your gain.
I want my book back and Rowman wont give it nor will they honor the contract that I signed that did allow for the book to transition if/when the publisher sold. He did. They bought. And you know, sometimes it is impossible to be optimistically kind and nice to people who move on without giving a damn to promises they made to their authors.
Corporate publisher staff come and go. They all seem to suffer a publishing dementia of not remembering what the prior exec said even when you produce docs supporting your position. With all the time spent debating the issue, how is it they cannot think forward to all this time could be spent with my updating the book which is what I wanted to do.
I know since I own the copyright I cannot be accused of stealing the IP. I know that if I update and do-over, they publisher will get the blush of my effort so that I will be my own competitor. As to their doing my update, Rowman said no. As to asking for my book back, note to self, doing it at the Book Show in the Javits was genius, entertainment wise watching the exec get so blustery I was betting he was going to fly up to the ceiling then explode. He didnt.
I didnt. I remain resolved. I will get my book back, my royalties and make the difference the Authors Guild didnt when they took on Google. Even the judge was rooting for them hoping they had something better to pull out of their briefs then what they were showing him which was s*#t.
I expect in the saga of HB which we can now openly shout out as HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU without fear of being sued, the next lawsuit will be from the sisters descendants now able to claim back royalties of the $2million+ that Warner Chappel collected over the years.
I do want my book back until then.......
Back to the Birthday Girls.
No proof was found the sisters behind the song gave the Music Publisher their right to assign and protect. Happy Birthday began as a poem written by Kentucky sisters Mildred & Patty Hill's "Good Morning to All" in a kindergarten songbook. The sisters had assigned to their publisher piano arrangements of their song & their rights to the song but not to the words which makes no sense since what is a song without words and what is a horse without a wagon. Contracts are contracts and bad contracts have a way of being broken. The sisters original publisher was SUMMY CO. that was acquired by WARNER/CHAPPEL.
Copyrights do not tranfer automatically with corporate acquisition although companies do presume, assume and threaten the content owner with legal battles if the content creator tries to argue before even fighting back, something I experienced personally with my book the "Handbook of Hebrew Calligraphy", a twenty year selling book written under my former married name.
My 1978 contract with JASON ARONSON PUBLISHING was acquired by ROWMAN LITTLEFIELD, a Landover Maryland based firm. Sorta. Corporations do seem to manage to have mirror lives in different states, each state offering a different pitch to landing that portion of the company there- taxes and all that stuff, you know.
JASON ARONSON was a Psych book publisher. My book was their attempt at infusing the Judaica market. And what a good choice, in books, Aronson made. My book remains top of its narrow specialty class, all these years laters. What remains in the toilet are my royalties. Call it creative accounting.
Rowman decided to start to count my royalties all over again, in 2004 or 5 or 3. Either which way, Rowman erased the history of my book that was published in 1990 or 1975 depending which online cite you read. This is important, you see, if the company falsely puts out my book was published 15 years before the actual date, the company is then pushing my book towards an early copyright grave, they think.
Not.
Royalties are almost non existent despite my book showing up online published around the world, after all, it is, still, the best of the hebrew calligraphy best. My book is published in the UK, other parts of the EU, Italy, Australia even Japan where copies can be bought for $400 not a dime of what I see. PDFs, downloads, even a "google copy" e-book managed by Hathi Trust is available.
I never allowed ebooks. I never allowed PDFs or downloads. Back in 1975 all I knew to allow were books of the old fashioned kind. But then there is that weird phrase that got stuck in the contract that back in the day didnt mean much when it talked about advancements in tech or such. I dunno. Would have to pull the damn contract out.
All I want is my royalties from 1990 to present date that included a step up in percentages when sales hit stated benchmarks. Didnt happen. Remember. A company that acquired a company rolled my contract back just like a car dealer rolls back the odometer on a car. Cars get the "Lemonade Law." Authors get, well,.... keeping it clean.... pulped, except I dont mean "pulped" I mean that hardware waord that starts with an "S" and ends with an "ED" and has a "Crew" in the middle.
Yeah, fighting back, or trying to, as a content creator does take on tones of a gang rape more often than not, leaving the creator bloodied with self esteem stolen.
More often than not the lawyers have no clue of what they are paid to fight for profit for. Remember, the Content Creator is still not getting paid while the lawyer gets a fee even if they fail.
My book? All I want to do is take it back, self publish it because the loss of goodwill at market is as damaging as the loss of royalties for all the books not sold the publisher alleges, well,..... what is the pinnochio max that one can give ever ever ever.
The copyright is mine. The Library of Congress says so. The e-book violation, by the way, was by the way of the Library of Congress who solicits, at least back then, hard copies of the book being copyrighted. The LOC says they do not allow commercialization of books in their protection but GOOGLE is public they scan everything short of boob and nobby sizes. They will get there too, in time. So the wasnt me's are the ones that coughed up my copyright and flung it to the world away from me so Kentucky sisters, I know your pain. I wish I could know your gain.
I want my book back and Rowman wont give it nor will they honor the contract that I signed that did allow for the book to transition if/when the publisher sold. He did. They bought. And you know, sometimes it is impossible to be optimistically kind and nice to people who move on without giving a damn to promises they made to their authors.
Corporate publisher staff come and go. They all seem to suffer a publishing dementia of not remembering what the prior exec said even when you produce docs supporting your position. With all the time spent debating the issue, how is it they cannot think forward to all this time could be spent with my updating the book which is what I wanted to do.
I know since I own the copyright I cannot be accused of stealing the IP. I know that if I update and do-over, they publisher will get the blush of my effort so that I will be my own competitor. As to their doing my update, Rowman said no. As to asking for my book back, note to self, doing it at the Book Show in the Javits was genius, entertainment wise watching the exec get so blustery I was betting he was going to fly up to the ceiling then explode. He didnt.
I didnt. I remain resolved. I will get my book back, my royalties and make the difference the Authors Guild didnt when they took on Google. Even the judge was rooting for them hoping they had something better to pull out of their briefs then what they were showing him which was s*#t.
I expect in the saga of HB which we can now openly shout out as HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU without fear of being sued, the next lawsuit will be from the sisters descendants now able to claim back royalties of the $2million+ that Warner Chappel collected over the years.
I do want my book back until then.......