the unhappy birthday project wants everyone to contact ASCAP and time warner (who own the song) to rat out people who sing it, in an attempt to flood them with annoying e-mails, phone calls, and letters. while this project sounds like a great idea, how many are really gonna do it? and what really will it accomplish? usually i'm all for projects like this but unhappy birthday seems a little pointless, simply because it doesn't really establish anything other than ASCAP and time warner getting a few too many phone calls. big whoop, you're probably pissing off the little guy, not any important execs.
okay maybe i'm a little harsh there. maybe the licensing for happy birthday will get lifted, if enough people actually go through with it and if ASCAP and time warner give in. but so what? symbolic protests don't really get us anywhere UNLESS the public is generally ignorant of the issue, but that's not the case here. everyone knows how retarded the RIAA is - everyone sees the silly RIAA lawsuits in the paper often enough to know that. this really appears to be like a great idea and all, and i guess if time warner actually did lift the infringement it would somehow show how pointless this whole thing is, but... how does the copyleft movement really win here? we end up mocking something that has been mocked numerous times over. this is the equivalent of the copyleft sticking out their tongue and..... that's about it.
