Universal Music Claims Copyright Over Newly Public Domain 'Yes! We Have No Bananas'
Found on Techdirt on Thursday, 14 November 2019
One of the signature works of the public domain class of 1923 was the song Yes! We Have No Bananas by composers Irving Cohn and Frank Silver. As of January 1st, anyone was free to make use of that song.
Glenn Fleishman had posted a video of the song to YouTube in celebration of it entering the public domain earlier this year.
However, that video has now been "claimed" by Universal Music and various subsidiaries, meaning that they could "monetize" it or force it offline, despite them literally having no rights to speak of.
An ownership claim for a public domain work is so weak that even Youtube should have refused it.