‘This Land Is Your Land’ Is Still Private Property, Court Rules
A federal Judge P. Kevin Castel dismissed a 2016 lawsuit attempting to transfer the song into the public domain.
‘This Land Is Your Land’ is about Trump’s father slum landlord Fred Trump.
His daughter claims the IP remains protected because she doesn’t want his songs being used in the promotion of political campaigns of people like Trump and used by groups like the KKK.
WOODY WROTE THE SONG ABOUT
Donald Trump’s Father Fred , who announced, “My legacy has its roots in my father’s legacy.”
Woody said “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.” Words Written by Guthrie in the late 1930s on a songbook distributed to listeners of his Los Angeles radio show Woody and Lefty Lou, who wanted the words to his recordings.
From A champion for equality Woody wrote “This Land Is Your Land” in hopes of equality for Americans and another one about Donald Trump’s Father Fred ….
Donald Trump’s money originally came from his grandfather Friedrich Trump a German immigrant, who ran a “grab em by the Pussy” whore house /restaurant – bar, in British Columbia.
Buried in a ghost town in Canada’s subarctic are the roots of the family fortune that paved Donald Trump’s path to prominence.
2016 Woody Guthrie, ‘Old Man Trump’ and a real estate empire’s racist foundations.
For 2 years Woody Guthrie lived in Fred Trump’s Beach Haven apartment complex. Guthrie’s most bitter writings clearly pit America’s national balladeer against the racist foundations of the Trump real estate empire.
When Guthrie first signed his lease, it’s unlikely that he was aware of the murky background to the construction of his new home, the massive public complex that Trump had dubbed “Beach Haven.” Fred Trump would be investigated by a U.S. Senate committee in 1954 for profiteering off of public contracts, not least by overestimating his Beach Haven building charges to the tune of US$3.7 million.
The Department of Justice sued the Trump real estate business in the 1970s for violating the Fair Housing Act.
Guthrie, whose songs advocated for American equality and condemned racism, lamented the lack of diversity among the residents of Trump’s Beach Haven apartments. Donald Trump was a nightmare landlord in the 1980s
Trump fired the building manager and replaced him with Citadel Management. In his book, The Art of the Deal, Trump himself said he chose a company that “specialized in relocating tenants.” Trump had cut off their hot water and heat during New York’s freezing winters and stopped all building repairs. One claimed he allowed “a rodent infestation of the premises.” Another said he imposed burdensome new rules in an attempt to force them out.
Woody Guthrie Wrote Angry Songs About Fred Trump who was Donald Trump’s Father
For Guthrie, Fred Trump came to personify all the viciousness of the racist codes that continued to put decent housing – both public and private – out of reach for so many of his fellow citizens:
I suppose
Old Man Trump knows
Just how much
Racial Hate
he stirred up
In the bloodpot of human hearts
When he drawed
That color line
Here at his
Eighteen hundred family project ….
And as if to leave no doubt over Trump’s personal culpability in perpetuating black Americans’ status as internal refugees – strangers in their own strange land –
Guthrie reworked his signature Dust Bowl ballad “I Ain’t Got No Home” into a blistering broadside against his landlord:
BEACH HAVEN AIN’T MY HOME
(aka. “Old Man Trump”) Words by Woody Guthrie
PARODY
JibJab, made a clear parody of the song during the 2004 Presidential election. In that case, once the EFF got involved, the case was settled out of court. But as EFF noted back in 2004, part of the reason for the settlement was pretty clear evidence that “This Land” was absolutely in the public domain. “This Land Is Your Land” has been in the public domain since 1973. [ the words are copyrighted not the tune ]
Melody – When The World’s On Fire – The Carter Family
Melody – Little Darlin’ Pal of Mine – Jake Tullock and Earl Scruggs
Fact #1: Guthrie wrote the song in 1940. At that time, the term of copyright was 28 years, renewable once for an additional 28 years. Under the relevant law, the copyright