Ludlow Music dropped its demands that JibJab, a small web animation site, stop using Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land” in a satirical Flash cartoon. It turns out Ludlow may not actually own the rights to the song as it claims, a lawyer representing JibJab said on Tuesday.
In early August, Ludlow, which claims to own the copyright for the folk tune, threatened to sue JibJab, alleging copyright infringement. JibJab used the tune to the song and rewrote the lyrics in a political animation to mock the presidential candidates. It refused to take down the cartoon and pre-emptively asked a judge to declare that it had a right to use the song as satire without having to get the permission of the owner. But in a bizarre twist, JibJab’s lawyers discovered that anyone may record their own version of the song — because the copyright on the words and music have expired, they said. Ludlow attorneys couldn’t immediately be reached for comment. “We did further research and we found that ‘This Land Is Your Land’ is in the public domain,” said Jason Schultz, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation who represented JibJab. “‘This Land Is Your Land’ belongs to you and me for real, now.”
Source: Wired
Articles RSS