Ramblings and webcomics from LeEMS
Hooray! This was the very case that I wanted to but didn’t mention in my itty bitty post on the hokey cokey.
Yesterday, the district court in Marya v. Warner/Chappell Music, Inc. invalidated one of the most famous, longest lasting, and controversial rights claims in music: Warner/Chappell’s ownership of the copyright in the universally known song Happy Birthday
Source: Public Knowledge Celebrates Court Decision in “Happy Birthday” Case – Public Knowledge
While watching a crazy amount of British television programming I started wondering on the differences between the U.S.’s Hokey pokey and the U.K.’s Hokey cokey. It turns out its variations and history is much more interesting than I thought (Wikipedia). Some form of hokey pokey has been traced to the 17th century and it may have been thought up as a way to make fun of Catholic priests performing the tradition Latin mass. It has variations in Australia, the Philippines and Denmark. The modern U.K. version was printed in 1942, and may have been recorded around that time. The U.S. version was also recorded in the late 40s.
Rather sensibly, the U.K. considers the hokey cokey a traditional song, meaning anyone can make use of it and it is not protected by copyright. Insensibly, Sony holds the copyrights over the hokey pokey.
It’s been almost ten years since I was handed my diagnosis of endometriosis. It felt fake and half hearted, a ‘your symptoms match, regardless of anomalies, so here you go’ type of right-off after years, and many different doctors, worth of investigation. The solutions to living with it were even less acceptable in my view, but I went along with them for a while until it came time to go back to the doctor to renew my prescription. It’s something I live with; something my husband lives with along side of me. It is something that only women who know the other has it too ever talk about.
That warm kind of connection, the ‘you know about this too,’ is what I felt when writers on the Conversation started posting about it:
If I haven’t meantioned the Conversation before, then I have been lax. It is a group blog of academics commenting on current events and it is quickly replacing my news and popular culture consumption.
