Lampshaded in the dub, where Keroro tells Mutsumi that he's in charge of "non-copyright-infringing birthday song composition." In an episode of Keroro Gunsou, Keroro gets Mutsumi to compose an original birthday song for Natsumi's surprise party.Kanna is still singing bits of the song to herself several episodes later. The Sakura Taisen TV series has an episode where the mostly-Asian team tries to celebrate Iris' birthday in the Western manner to which she is accustomed, including an attempt at singing an original "happy birthday" song.Zoku Sayonara, Zetsubou-sensei gets away with a Gratuitous English version of the song, too.And "Kimurin" sings a really different one. In the dubbed version, though, she sings a different birthday song.In Azumanga Daioh, after Yukari's class offers her a belated birthday present, she triumphantly belts out a Gratuitous English rendition of "Happy Birthday To You.".In Ai Yori Aoshi, the Japanese vocal track used "Happy Birthday to You", while the English dub track substituted a different song.Space Runaway Ideon second movie had children singing it.right after the Kill'Em All slaughterfest.As it turned out, Warner/Chappell's claim to the song's copyright turned out to be so specious as to be all but fraudulent. This case of copyright laws gone too far was often subject to Lampshade Hanging. That you could be sued for realistically portraying a North American birthday party was mind-boggling. The fact that a little ditty sung thousands of times a day around the world, and which only contains five words (not counting the person's name), was subject to copyright laws was serious Snark Bait. So, instrumental or foreign-language versions were exempt from this rule. It was borrowed from an older song, "Good Morning to All", the copyright on which expired decades ago. However, while the lyrics to "Happy Birthday to You" were under copyright, the melody was not. Given the events cited above, this will no doubt change - in fact, it has already changed for many of those chain restaurants - but for now nearly every work you'll encounter will probably be using an alternative or The Jimmy Hart Version.
That makes this now a Discredited Trope, and possibly even a Dead Horse Trope.)Īs a result, when a birthday is being celebrated on television or in the movies, it's fairly rare for those involved to actually sing "Happy Birthday to You." "For He's A Jolly Good Fellow" is often substituted (British shows may use "A Fine Old English Gentleman" instead), unlike in the real world, where singing anything other than "Happy Birthday To You" is almost unheard of (except when the singers are the waitstaff of certain chain restaurants, for exactly the same reason). Oh, and the copyright expired in 1985 in Canada.
In the United States, a federal court ruled in 2016 that the song is in the public domain and had been for decades, contrary to claims by Warner/Chappell Music. (The copyright expired in the European Union on January 1, 2017. It may well be an old standard, but up until the middle-late 2010s the song "Happy Birthday to You" was not in the public domain. PAGES WILL BE DELETED OTHERWISE IF THEY ARE MISSING BASIC MARKUP. DON'T MAKE PAGES MANUALLY UNLESS A TEMPLATE IS BROKEN, AND REPORT IT THAT IS THE CASE. THIS SHOULD BE WORKING NOW, REPORT ANY ISSUES TO Janna2000, SelfCloak or RRabbit42. The Trope workshop specific templates can then be removed and it will be regarded as a regular trope page after being moved to the Main namespace. All new trope pages will be made with the "Trope Workshop" found on the "Troper Tools" menu and worked on until they have at least three examples.Pages that don't do this will be subject to deletion, with or without explanation. All new pages should use the preloadable templates feature on the edit page to add the appropriate basic page markup. All images MUST now have proper attribution, those who neglect to assign at least the "fair use" licensing to an image may have it deleted.Failure to do so may result in deletion of contributions and blocks of users who refuse to learn to do so.
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