When I first heard that this song was copyrighted, I thought that one easy way for Stallman to get his point across would be to produce a copyrightable work more accessible to the average person. Something along the lines of:

• briefly describe why 'Happy Birthday' is copyrighted, and that it's a legal liability for the company
• slightly modify 'Join us now, in freedom' to include birthday lyrics
• describe why it's freely singable, as long as you don't try to restrict others from singing it
• pay a real songwriter to compose alternative birthday song that people would actually want to sing as a birthday song
• license song as GPL or Creative Commons
• print out song and short description on postcards
• as a footnote, include a URL pointing to average-person-understandable description of how copyright is being weaponized, and that copyleft is an alternative
• send postcards to HQ for restaurants, letting them know they can sing it freely
• people hear the same song in multiple restaurants and start getting curious
• copyleft birthday song replaces copyrighted birthday song
• people start understanding copyright, copyleft, and Creative Commons better
• Freedom, freedom, freedom, oy!

Bugaboo Creek Steak House:
Happy Birthday
Happy Birthday to you
Happy Birthday to you
B.C. Sucks!*

It's your birthday
Your very special birthday
Your Buga-buga birthday
is here!
Happy Birthday from Bugaboo Creek Steak House!


* "B.C." is Boston College, and this song was sung by a friend from Boston University and a college hockey fan; note that lyrics may not be entirely accurate to the original.

One thing that struck me was the time and effort he put into it. He's been working on it for many years now, which is probably why he's been able to write 800 modules for the project.

Or you could start with our less advantaged citizens.

And sometimes the man just comes in and shuts you down.

Doesn't even have to be all of $100.

Classic obligatory column on Kopi Luwak. Definitely a memorable description of his experience with it.

Maybe in European languages the connotation is more from 'ware' , usable in the singular (?) sense?

Bara för att jag ska göra mitt bästa för att genericize skiten ur din dyrbara lilla "varumärke", din jävel.

Source: Google Translate

That's not cheating, right?

'Saturday night special' is what came to mind for me too. Is it only law enforcement that concerns themselves with gun crime, while the ATF is tasked with issues regarding the guns themselves?

They also made a public statement about an employee termination in a way I thought was unusually descriptive.

I did appreciate Amanda Blum's take on this -- it was clear, almost wholly fact-oriented, and very informative.

And finally we have the argument for Google Glass.

Maybe a public apology -- "I was wrong", "I made a mistake", "I'm sorry", "I made incorrect assumptions about my company's support", "I will not make this mistake again, and this is why", maybe even "I wronged these two people".

Something like that owning up to her behavior, followed by a credible explanation that she changed as a result of the experience, and that her behavior was not to be interpreted as reflective of the company's values. Then followed by how she plans to make amends.

You're right about her mistake being public, so publicly trying to fix it seems an obvious option.

What I wanted to add was that it seems odd that a company would produce such a detailed public statement on specific internal decisions on an employee's behavior. Even more so since it seems like it was predicated on what sounded like an explicable, rectifiable employee mistake.

I wasn't sure I wanted to submit this and accidentally hit Submit instead of Continue Editing ... ugh.