1930s National Parks & WPA posters | This Land Is Your Land | Woody Guthrie

Music: 1940 This Land Is Your Land | Woody Guthrie 1944
Video: 1930s National Parks & Monuments | WPA posters
1930s playlist: https://t.ly/TxIW

The running order, in year of designation. Asterisk = shown with a Works Progress Administration Federal Art Project poster c. 1936 - 1939. No asterisk = shown with more recent poster:

Yellowstone NP Wyoming, designated 1872 *
Yosemite NP California 1890 *
Lassen Volcanic NP California 1916 *
Grand Canyon NP Arizona 1919 *
Zion NP 1919 Utah *
Carlsbad Caverns NP New Mexico 1930 *
Canyon de Chelly NM New Mexico 1931
Cedar Breaks NM Utah 1933
Death Valley NP California 1933
Everglades NP Florida 1934
Great Smoky Mountains NP Tennessee & North Carolina 1934
Dry Tortugas NP Florida f/k/a Fort Jefferson NM 1935
Shenandoah NP Virginia 1935
Badlands NP South Dakota f/k/a Badlands NM 1939

A few of the people photos are nod to the history and conflicts over the lands involved.

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"‘This Land Is Your Land’ Is Still Private Property, Court Rules
New York Times
28 February 28, 2020

First, 'Happy Birthday to You' lost its copyright. Then 'We Shall Overcome' became public domain as well.

But on Friday, Woody Guthrie’s 'This Land Is Your Land' avoided what had been shaping up as a growing trend affecting the copyright owners of old songs, as the publishers of 'This Land' defeated a challenge against it.

In the case, a young musical group called Satorii sued the song’s publishers, Ludlow Music and the Richmond Organization, after paying $45.50 for a license to release a cover version of 'This Land Is Your Land,' which Guthrie wrote in 1940. In their complaint — filed by the same lawyers behind the 'Happy Birthday' and 'We Shall Overcome' suits — the group used a detailed timeline of decades-old paperwork and Guthrie’s own hand-decorated songbooks to argue that Guthrie had essentially forfeited his copyright to the song decades ago by failing to renew it properly.

They asked for the song’s copyright to be declared invalid, which would have put 'This Land' in the public domain. Since 'This Land' is under copyright, the song must be licensed any time it is recorded, used in a film or performed in a commercial setting. For some of those uses, like a radio broadcast, the license may already be covered under 'blanket' deals in which users pay a fee for access to thousands of songs, with the fees eventually divided among the individual copyright owners.

A similar legal strategy of tracking old paperwork had been used successfully against 'Happy Birthday,' whose origins could be traced to another song, 'Good Morning to You,' from 1893. According to some estimates, 'Happy Birthday' was in recent years still generating about $2 million a year from licensing and other income.

But for 'This Land,' the case ended up hinging on other legal details. Satorii, the challenger of the copyright, lost an important ruling in the case last year. On Friday, Judge P. Kevin Castel of Federal District Court in Manhattan did not reach a decision on whether the song deserved to keep its copyright, because he said he didn’t have to. He ruled that there was no legal dispute for him to adjudicate: Satorii had already paid the license fee, and in exchange, the publisher had agreed to let Satorii do what it wanted with the song. The judge dismissed the case.

Mark C. Rifkin, a lawyer for Satorii, said in a statement: 'We are disappointed with the court’s decision, which gave the defendants unfair veto power to stop this meritorious case from proceeding. We are considering how best to continue to pursue these important issues.'

Paul V. LiCalsi, a lawyer for Ludlow and Richmond, said only that his clients were pleased with the result.

Woody Guthrie Publications, which is led by Guthrie’s daughter Nora, is a joint owner of the song’s copyright. But after the case was filed four years ago, Ms. Guthrie, who has been the longtime keeper of her father’s cultural legacy, said the dispute was about more than money. The copyright to 'This Land,' she said, allowed the song’s message of inclusion to be protected from abuse and political jingoism."

(https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/28/ar...)