Quote:
Originally Posted by murg
I witnessed law-breaking on a horrendous scale yesterday.
I was in a restaurant, and a group of people sang the Happy Birthday song. Clearly audible on the street outside, which definitely makes it a public performance.
I'm surprised the SWAT team didn't descend from helicopters and arrest everyone.
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A work associate and I were working in Paris (so no little sleepy country village) and having a meal at a family restaurant. It turned out that at another table a young boy was having his birthday party and those at the table sang the French Happy Birthday song for him. Now that was informal, family and friends so probably ok, but what I am to relate next will for sure incur the ire of the literal law interpreters here.
When they finished singing, my friend and I, uninvited, sang Happy Birthday to him in English. A true public performance as both the boy and his family, and the whole restaurant went quiet and listened; we knew no one there, they were just an "audience".
Now while we did not get paid in money we sure as hell got very well rewarded in brownie points by both the patrons and the staff who despite us being very, very poor singers thought we were wonderful
.
But it doesn't end there. My wife and I were guests of friends on a super-yacht one New Year and a couple of the better able were giving (not drunken) singing solos. Now I am nowhere even close to having the ability (nor wanting
) to do that but my wife does; in fact when she did so the crew switched the audio into the deck public address system at full volume and so she ended up entertaining, in a very public way, not only those on board but the whole marina as well as the whole neighborhood.
To date, no rights holders have come knocking on our doors; perhaps those who are sticklers for literal interpretations of the law could tell me when they will be doing so? (And before they point it out, I am aware that the rights over Happy Birthday are disputed, but as in this case when the rights holder is swimming in money but we are not, they could exert their rights by just chasing us into submission).