Or rather, you can say the lyrics of Happy Birthday because that's the part they were claiming to own.

I mean, the original melody with the original lyrics Good Morning to all are in the public domain so you can sing the tune all you want, but not the unique intellectual property that is the lyrics.

Happy birthday to you Happy birthday to you half being birthday dear Sorry, what was your name?

Statistically, it's probably Mohammed.

Happy birthday, dear.

Happy Birthday two You.

These lyrics are protected by United States copyright law because what incentive would there be for lyricists to create great work if the people who buy the rights from people who bought the rights from the people about the rights from them 70 years after they're dead can't make millions of dollars a year off?

People repeating the words Happy birthday to you over and over to the tune of a public domain song.

Now I'm no expert in copyright law, but I am an expert in music theory, and I love any opportunity to pretend my music Degrees East ful.

So let's talk about three features of Happy Birthday that differ from the original public domain.

Good Morning to all song.

The one everyone talks about is the lyrics.

In fact, the entire lawsuit was all about who wrote the lyrics, who transferred the rights to the lyrics to whom and who holds the rights to them.

Now, of course, to anyone with common sense, the question is, how are such simple lyrics even copyrightable on their own?

The only difference between the public domain and supposedly copyrighted lyrics is a switching out of one common greeting for another.

And all of a sudden you get to claim millions and royalties.

Guess what?

Justice system.

Nobody buys that.

How about before you demand respect from the American public?

You have some respect for yourself, of course.

Almost all lyrics and poems and books are just combinations of pre existing words.

But US math, a musician's care about how much complexity is required to turn those common bits into a composed work of art.

Someone's probably said this sentence before it's a likely sentence, but if not, does that mean that anyone who ever says that sentence ever again has to pay me royalties?

Probably not.

But what if I go like this, he said.

Probably this'd be if I can get you to associate those simple, obvious lyrics with a relatively more complex song.

Maybe you'll be tricked into thinking the lyrics alone are worth more than they are.

Patty Hill, who wrote Good Morning to All, along with Mildred Hill in 18 93 said she tested the tune on school Children using different words for different occasions.

Goodbye to you, Happy New Year's to you, Happy Christmas to You and so forth and so on, including Happy Birthday to You, which is interesting because what she's describing is an algorithm for creating simple lyrics on any occasion.

Take the common greeting for that occasion to you.

Repeat greeting, plus specific or group name.

Repeat.

Patty Hills Lyric creation algorithm could just as easily have created Happy Graduation.

Thio.

Happy graduation.

Happy Friday, Thio Happy Friday to write a dio a happy two.

Congratulations on your first period.

Congratulations on your way.

Congratulations on your first period, huh?

Now there is certainly creativity in my arrangement.

and performance here.

But the words who thinks I should get royalties now?

For anyone who uses the Happy Friday lyrics and applying the algorithm to such special occasions, it's puberty.

Sounds a bit novel, but it wouldn't be surprising if other people had sung those exact same lyrics before.

It's a good song and a good algorithm, and I fully support Patty and Mildred Hill, getting money and credit for that work, as they and their publishers and subsequent right solders did from 18 93 all the way until 1949 years after Patty and Mildred were both dead.

No one is fooled into thinking there's any legitimate claim to any lyrics created by Patties.

Out of copyright algorithm now is pure greed.

Is using a broken system take advantage of people that don't have the power to fight back now.

This is certainly not the worst abuse of power that exists right now, but it's something that we need to care about because we're moving into a future where more and more property is intellectual property, digital goods, digital media, virtual lives and virtual spaces.

People have the right to maintain control over their own lives, and to protect their property.

So as more and more of our property becomes intellectual property, whether our own or others, we'd better get better at keeping exploited of companies from asserting authority over other people's stuff.

Which reminds me, I should probably do my regular check to see whether you Tip has put ABS and my body is at the request of another company falsely claimed to own my work for the third time.

So much is notifying me when they decide to start monetizing and collecting the ad money from my videos on my YouTube channel.

So we have to check regularly and filed counterclaims and guess who keeps the money?

And people wonder why I hardly ever make YouTube videos anymore anyway.

Enough about the lyrics on two musical analysis.

There's a couple musical changes from the original that have always bothered and amazed me first because I've never heard anyone else talk about them.

And second, because they are a part of whatever mysterious cultural forces take a song and turn it into something everyone knows the time Signature of the original Good Morning to all is a simple study.

34 notice.

There are no eighth notes.

So what happens when you replace a one syllable word like Good with a two syllable word like Happy?

The natural thing in 34 would be to eighth notes like this two.

You they day Sorry about the lack of happy triplets, but that's not what we sing When we sing Happy Birthday.

We make it this triplet thing.

It has this happy skipping sound, which is just not in the original Good morning, dear Children.

And it's not that the whole thing got put in 98 though you certainly could do that, but that some notes get triple it'd and some don't check it out.

Happy Bir two You birthday to You They dear Oliver, not a liver favors day, too, and everyone singing knows to switch from triplets to do blitz without even thinking about it, even if they don't know what triplets and do.

Blitz are is weird.

No one would ever sit down and write a Children's song like that, but the weirdest thing is what happens just after you say the person's name?

Have you ever noticed that this simple song that everyone knows has a time signature that switches from 34 244 for just one measure.

Seriously, check it out.

1231231212312 three.

Who does that?

I mean, everyone does that.

They do it without realizing it every single birthday.

But seriously, who would ever write a song like that for Children besides no one?

Because that extra beat is not in the original.

How did that extra beat just get added in and remembered, and some consistently by everyone without anyone?

Even thinking about it in modern versions is often written as a for Mata because suddenly changing a measure to 44 is too weird.

But it's not A for Mata is not just some pause of indeterminate length.

It's exactly one extra beat, always a 44 measure in perfect time added by consensus of the entire world.

Despite not being notated in any arrangement with the music I've ever seen, it's astounding.

We think of popular songs is having to be simple and easy that humans aren't smart enough to keep track of triplets and do plates and changing time signatures.

Patty and Mildred Hill put a lot of work into trying to make something simple enough for Children.

But this song that made its way into common use grew its own special lumps and textures, the kind of complexity that forms when anything artificial gets reshaped into something lumpy enough to fit in the deep recesses of our cultural consciousness.

And it's nice to know that now we can sing this weird, lumpy thing without getting sued into oblivion.

It is a good day.

I think.

I'll call it Happy Birthday Day on that note.

Happy day, Thio.

I'm like most of YouTube.

I don't have a collective noun for my viewers, and we'll make one up day, dear, intelligent and capable humans who take responsibility not just where they must, but where they know it is right.

Happy Birthday, Happy birthday.