Ok, a little moronic and a little late, but the inventor of the electric slide is claiming and attempting to enforce copyright over his dance (which, by the way, is “for professional dancers only”). He’s also trying to use the DMCA to go after videos of the dance. Being unfamiliar with and nominally averse to the bizarre practice of “dancing” you hu-mons seem to relish so, losing the electric slide to the clutches of copyright does not concern me greatly. If Ignignokt tried to copyright flipping the bird, however, things might be different.
Also, fantastic (but copyrighted) diagrams of the electric slide can be found in this book.
Via NPR
doesn’t this fall under the same copyright umbrella as recipes? i suppose a dance can be sufficiently creative, but how could this possibly be enforceable? imagine if michael jackson copyrighted the moonwalk (did he?!?). how could he enforce all the street performers who dance a variation of the moonwalk everyday? can any of the performances of the dance be considered derivative works?
interestingly the somewhat unrelated urban legend that the birthday song is copyrighted is actually true!
http://www.snopes.com/music/songs/birthday.asp
someone also posted this to an email list:
http://www.roblathan.com/2007/01/26/the-electric-slide-vs-lathan/
looks like stilts aren’t enough of a twist.
re: happy birthday, that reminds me of that one episode of “sports night”
http://www.tv.com/sports-night/intellectual-property/episode/37474/summary.html
quality show.