‘This Land Is Your Land’ May Indeed Belong to You and Me

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http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/06/18/business/media/this-guthrie-song-is-your-song-a-lawsuit-claims.html?post_id=10207301761455219_1020873582086588#_=_

The classic folk song “This Land Is Your Land” may literally belong to you and me.

That’s the case being pressed by the same law firm that persuaded a federal judge last year that “Happy Birthday to You” belongs in the public domain.

The New York firm, Wolf Haldenstein Adler Freeman & Herz, also hopes to do the same for the Civil Rights-era protest song “We Shall Overcome.”

But the suit filed Tuesday over Woody Guthrie’s classic “This Land Is Your Land” is aimed at liberating a song known to generations of schoolchildren who have raised their voices to sing about a free country belonging to one and all, sprawling “from California to New York Island, from the redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters.”

The suit was filed on behalf of the Brooklyn band Satorii, which recorded two versions of the song. It argues that the music belongs to the public and not to the Richmond Organization and its subsidiary, Ludlow Music, the publishing company that collects licensing fees to use the composition. Ludlow did not return phone calls or answer an email message seeking comment on Thursday.

The law firm seems to be developing a specialty in liberating classic musical works. An earlier lawsuit, also filed against Ludlow in April, focused on “We Shall Overcome,” a song long associated with the folk singer Pete Seeger, who died in 2014. The firm also successfully liberated the “Happy Birthday” copyright from Warner Music Group.