That'll teach Woody Guthrie to stay off of my lawn
I'm sure that by now everyone has seen the jibjab Flash animation of George Bush and John Kerry singing "This Land Is My Land." Well, according to No Rock & Roll Fun, its makers are being sued for breach of copyright. This brings up the vexing question: "This Land Is My Land" isn't public domain yet? And the vexing answer: anything younger than Mickey Mouse will always be covered by copyright laws as long as Disney can pay their lawyers. In any case, it's a fair case for sardonicism that every American second-grader's introduction to a socialist disregard for individual property should provide the occasion for a ridiculous overapplication of intellectual property law; and, indeed, Woody Guthrie himself said, back when Mickey Mouse was, oh, my guess is 28 years old, "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."