JibJab, creator of that popular This Land Is Your Land political parody has been warned that they are infringing on Woody Guthrie’s copyright (see letter here.) As the Wired story notes, this action is the antithesis of the spirit of Woody Guthrie, who had this to say about copyrights:
This song is copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright #154085, for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin it without our permission, will be mighty good friends of ourn, cause we don’t give a dern. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that’s all we wanted to do.
UPDATE: Much discussion of the issue can be found at The Volokh Conspiracy. Just keep scrolling.
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Ladies & Gentlemen, I present to you what is wrong with American copyright
So you may have seen the Jib-Jab "This land" cartoon in the past few weeks. I first saw it from a link here in the comments at this blog (Rann, was it you that linked it?), laughed my ass off, and then I didn't see it many places for…