This Song is Your Song

If you've been paying attention to the popular infotainment media lately you're probably familiar with JibJab and the animated version of "This Land Is Your Land" that they did, in which candidates Bush and Kerry attack each other and each claims that, "This land will surely vote for me". It's what passes for mainstream political satire these days, taking neither side and glossing over any real substance. But it's cute and it's funny.

And it's the subject of a lawsuit.

It seems that an outfit called The Richmond Organization is suing JibJab, claiming that the duo's use of Guthrie's tune and the filked version of his lyrics violates their copyright on the song. JibJab's defence is that their little music video is parody, and that protects it from copyright infringement suits under the doctrine of "Fair Use".

But where it starts getting dodgy is the question of what they're satirizing. The "Fair Use" doctrine says you can copy and distort something for the purpose of satirizing it, but that doesn't mean you can copy it for the purpose of satirizing something else. So the question isn't whether JibJab is making fun of John and W, but whether they're making fun of Woody's song.

I think they are. Sure, the presidential candidates are the main target, but even if it wasn't at the forefront of their minds, they're making a commentary on the original song as well. "This Land Is Your Land" was intended as a populist anthem. It was written as an answer to Irving Berlin's "God Bless America" (Guthrie's original title for it was "God Blessed America") written from Guthrie's perspective as a socialist. In the current political system it's no longer "your land" and "my land" but Kerry's or Bush's. JibJab's version points that out. They could have based their song on "Yankee Doodle" or "When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again" or "Disco Duck" (the sort of thing Mark Russell has made a career of)... but they chose Guthrie's anthem, for the irony of its message in the current context.

Probably the greatest irony in this case is the fact that a copyright suit is even possible. Guthrie had no use for copyright. In one of the lyric sheets that he used to send free of charge to anyone who asked for them (selling sheet music was a major source of income for songwriters in those days), he included the following notice: "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." He probably would have committed it to the public domain except that his publisher wouldn't have touched his material with a 10 foot pole if he'd done that. Sure, the writer was doing the equivalent of telling his fans to "steal this song", but at least this way the company technically still had ownership of it.

Which was a mistake on Woody's part. Because 28 years was just the beginning. Since then the U.S. Congress has repeatedly extended the terms of copyrights, and some 60 years later, when Woody's been dead more than three decades, that copyright is now owned by some corporation that makes its living by licencing the compositions in their portfolio of copyrights. And they're under no legal obligation to adhere to Guthrie's obvious stated wishes. So they're suing JibJab, for doing precisely what the composer had invited us all to do.

OK, maybe this isn't exactly what Woody had in mind. He probably figured that people would keep to the original lyrics, mostly. But I think he would have approved of this use. He'd probably snarl about how gutless the jibjabs at Bush and Kerry were, but he'd appreciate the fact that they're making fun of these two corporate candidates, both far to the right of Guthrie's own politics.

Woody never would have approved of what TRO is doing. Not only do we have that old copyright statement to tell us that, we also have the original lyrics of the song. The song went through several revisions, and Woody himself apparently toned down and later dropped the version I'm about to quote, but his manuscript of the original lyrics includes the following verse, which he followed with a slightly-changed chorus:

Was a high wall there that tried to stop me
A sign was painted said: Private Property,
But on the back side it didn't say nothing.
That side was made for you and me.

I wouldn't go as far as Woody appears to be going with this, challenging the whole concept of private property. But I love the cleverness with which he questioned it, and I admire him for doing so, because I think our society treats it as far too sacrosanct. Like in this suit.

By any reasonable standard (and certainly by Guthrie's expectations) "This Land Is Your Land" should be in the public domain by now. Expurgated or not, it has become part of our cultural legacy, and anyone should be able to use it without getting permission or paying royalties to some corporation that happened to get its legal mitts on a copyright that Guthrie never really wanted in the first place.

This song is your song, this song is my song,
From the fields of Texas, to the streets of Boston.
For the right-wing nut jobs, and the liberal sissies,
This song was made for you and me.

UPDATE, 25 August: The pretended owners have backed down, following the introduction of evidence that the song was published in a songbook in 1945 whose copyright was not renewed (back when that was required). They still claim that the 1956 copyright they were suing under is valid, but that's a bit preposterous, since you can't copyright a song twice... and if they really believed it, why would they (the party with the deeper pockets) be giving up?