Rolando Garza

The Electronic Frontier Foundation announced JibJab’s victory on this week’s publication. Finally, it has been acknowledged that ‘This Land’ is now in the public domain. So I suggest you go and share a laugh with the JibJab guys.

* This Song Belongs to You and Me

By Fred von Lohmann
EFF Senior Intellectual Property Attorney

On Tuesday, EFF announced that music publisher Ludlow
Music, Inc., has officially backed down from its threats
against web animation studio JibJab Media Inc. over the
widely circulated “This Land” animated parody lampooning
President Bush and Senator Kerry. The resolution is a
complete victory for JibJab, which will be entitled to
continue distributing the “This Land” animation without
further interference from Ludlow.

Two things made this outcome possible. First, JibJab’s
fantastic animation is a clear fair use of Woody Guthrie’s
“This Land Is Your Land,” for the reasons described in
detail in EFF’s initial letter to Ludlow’s attorney.

But also important was our other discovery: the Guthrie
classic has been in the public domain since 1973.

Fact #1: Guthrie wrote the song in 1940. At that time,
the term of copyright was 28 years, renewable once for
an additional 28 years. Under the relevant law, the
copyright term for a song begins when the song is
published as sheet music. (Just performing it is not
enough to trigger the clock.)

Fact #2: A search of Copyright Office records shows
that the copyright wasn’t registered until 1956, and
Ludlow filed for a renewal in 1984.

Fact #3: Thanks to tips provided by musicologists who
heard about this story, we discovered that Guthrie
published and sold the sheet music for “This Land Is Your
Land” in a pamphlet in 1945. An original copy of this
mimeograph was located for us by generous volunteers
who visited the Library of Congress in Washington, DC.

This means that the copyright in the song expired in 1973,
28 years after Guthrie published the sheet music.
Ludlow’s attempted renewal in 1984 was 11 years tardy,
which means the classic Guthrie song is in the
public domain. (I’ll note that Ludlow disputes this,
although I’ve not heard any credible explanation from
them.)

So Guthrie’s original joins the Star-Spangled Banner,
Amazing Grace, and Beethoven’s Symphonies in the public
domain. Come to think of it, now that “This Land Is
Your Land” is in the public domain, can we make it
our national anthem? That would be the most fitting
ending of all.

For the original version of this piece online, including
links to relevant websites and documents:

http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/001840.php

Official press release on the JibJab victory:

http://www.eff.org/news/archives/2004_08.php#001838

“Ten Songs of Woody Guthrie,” published in 1945:

http://www.eff.org/IP/20040823_Jibjab_Copyright_Scans.pdf