I think it's unnecessary to use such defeatist language. Nothing has been stolen here. Happy Birthday entered the public commons known as 'culture' and therefore belongs to nobody. One group here is trying to usurp this song from the public and extract rent for nothing. If anything, they are the ones "stealing" something from society.

Happy Birthday was not 'stolen by society.' The whole basis of the legal case is that the song was already in the public domain by the time the copyright was registered on the arrangement in 1935, either by actively encouraging its public use or through constructive abandonment of copyright (a somewhat debateable legal theory) by allowing its use in multiple films, stage performances etc. prior to registration.

The thing is, while it's obvious that this is the case for Happy Birthday, it's less obviously the case for almost everything else. We incorporate works of art, and especially music, into our lives and our social interactions. What kinds of music we like become part of our identity. And the current state of copyright law doesn't allow for this. We should have copyright exemptions for non-commercial performances and derivative works.

As just an example of this, when my father died, I put together a slideshow of photos of him throughout the years. I used four of his favorite songs as the music, since it connected with memories that I and others have of him. We played it at his memorial and many people found it quite moving and asked me to upload it to Youtube. But because it had the music in it, I couldn't. Luckily Dropbox doesn't have anything like ContentID yet, but it still seemed wrong that copyright law would prevent me from sharing this piece of my dad with everyone that knew and loved him. There was no profit to be made from the sharing and what I wanted to share wouldn't cause any financial harm to the artists or labels who own the copyrights...if anything it would convince many people to buy those songs in a format that would work on music players.

It's frustrating that our current laws don't take into account that the creations that they make become part of our lives. The laws need to strike a better balance between compensating the creator and realizing that, once creations are released, they take on a life of their own and become meaningful to others. Humans seem programmed to share music...it's almost a tribal/instinctual thing. And no law that tries to controvert basic human instincts will ever be successful.

That's true. I wasn't meaning to argue that this would apply anywhere else, but Happy Birthday is a place where it clearly applies. It would only be a problem if some court ruled that the song wasn't public domain or available for fair use, since it is clear that it should be.

This is somewhat related to something else about business that people often seem to forget: Many people talk about businesses as though they are machines for converting employees time to products that they can sell for profit. But companies also produce culture, and that culture will be exported whether it's paid for or not. And they have a responsibility to produce good culture.

Your comment and all of the replies reveal how much our culture is bound up with a notion of private property as a self-evident and inalienable right, rather than a as social contract. Yes, you and some others are agreeing that it isn't theft, but everyone is bending over backwards to justify that conclusion.

For me, that fact that we give anyone a 100-year monopoly on something that has probably recouped the creator's "investment" a million times over reveals a flaw in our system.