Sept. 23: An Indian-origin musician in the US was among many celebrating victory today after a California court ruled as invalid a copyright claim by a giant corporation on Happy Birthday To You, dubbed the world's most popular song.
Rupa Marya, the lead voice, composer and music director of the band Rupa and The April Fishes, had joined film-maker Robert Siegel in challenging the copyright on Happy Birthday claimed by Warner Music, which had been charging licence fees for commercial use of the song.
US district judge George H. King of a Los Angeles federal court examined the history of the song and its lyrics - traced back to the 1890s - and ruled that Warner could not own the copyright it had claimed.
"I'm elated today, and excited to see that ordinary citizens can challenge the stupid greed of corporations and take back what belongs in the commons," Marya told The Telegraph on email from the US.
During a live performance with her band in 2013, the audience sang Happy Birthday to her. But when she went to release a CD of the recording, her lawyer told her that she would have to pay $455 to Warner because they claimed to own the copyright.
"I thought the claim was insane," Marya said today. "The song has been around for over 100 years and is sung by people all over the world." She first challenged the claim independently, then joined the film-maker Siegel.
Happy Birthday, which is sung in homes, offices, educational institutions and elsewhere worldwide, is often described as the most popular song in the world, the lyrics sung by billions of people each year.
Researchers have traced the origin of the song to two American sisters, Patty and Mildred Hill, who in the 1890s had pencilled an original version with the lyrics " Good Morning To You".
But Warner bought the copyright on the song in 1988 and has been charging licence fees for commercial uses, including the use of the song on television, in cinema, plays, or for distribution through CDs.
Robert Brauneis, a professor of law at George Washington University in the US, had five years ago published a research paper saying Happy Birthday is "almost certainly no longer under copyright due to a lack of evidence about who wrote the words, defective copyright notice, and a failure to file a proper renewal application".
He had said in his paper that the song generates an estimated $2 million per year, but had pointed out that "yet no one has ever sought adjudication of the validity of its copyright".
Marya, who was born in California to Indian immigrants, and raised in India, France and San Francisco, sees the victory for rights to sing Happy Birthday as only a "first step" towards more such battles.
"This is the first step for other issues that need challenging - for example, taking giant multinational corporations to task for their criminal acts with seeds, removing food security from the hands of the people who need it the most," said Marya, who is also a trained medical doctor, an assistant professor at the University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine.
"Corporations will do greedy things because that is how they are built and how they must survive. It is the job of people to act and demand that governments hold them in check so that things vital and precious to us all remain in the commons," said Marya, who had brought her band to perform at a festival in Jodhpur in 2011.
"(Jodhpur) was by far and away one of the most memorable concerts in my life," she said. "I wish to return as soon as we can."
Asked when her birthday is, Marya said: "My birthday is irrelevant."
