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April 12, 2006

You can't beat folk

Woody Guthrie:

"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."

—Written by Guthrie in the late 1930s on a songbook distributed to listeners who wanted the words to his recordings

[Thanks to Mike Saunders for the link.] [Tags: copyright woody_guthrie digital_rights]

Posted by D. Weinberger at April 12, 2006 03:54 PM

Comments

Maybe this is an early prototype of a Creative Commons license, at least in spirit.

This quote reminds me that many of our problems aren't new, and neither are possible solutions.

Posted by: Bill Anderson | April 12, 2006 06:29 PM

And for a followup, you should read the book "Freedom Of Expression(tm)", by Kembrew McLeod. I blogged about it here:

http://jiggle.anaze.us/archives/2005/11/reading_list_1.html

It is a real scary book about the power of the copyright police, esp. in regards to music. And one of the worst offenders for aggressive "copyright" tactics is the Woody Guthrie estate, which he finds incredibly ironic.

Posted by: Jonathan Arnold | April 13, 2006 11:52 AM

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