There’s a great story on Wired News (and elsewhere in previous days) about a copyright lawsuit against the two brothers who produced the brilliant “This Land” campaign parody. The people who own the rights to Woody Guthrie’s songs, the Richmond Organization, have demanded “This Land” be removed from the Net because the brothers stole Guthrie’s music. The Wired News story ends with this note on Guthrie’s reported wishes regarding the song’s copyright:
“According to various Internet sources, including the website of the Museum of Musical Instruments in Santa Cruz, California, Guthrie allegedly wrote, ‘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.’ ”
There are several rarely heard refrains that Woody was known to sing at progressive rallies, one (reportedly) went:
This song is your song,
This song is my song
From the Carters
To both the Bushes
From the early 30’s
To the current martyrs,
Jib Jab’s a song for you and me.
Then there’s this one, where Woody anticipated the Web:
This blog is my blog,
This blog is your blog,
From my clever postings
To brilliant comments.
From my genius insights
To your witty replies
This blog was made for you and me.