You Can't Copystrike the Sun

Summary

A cheerfully satirical song about copyright, intellectual property, and the commons — sung in the register of an inspirational advertisement. The stage directions are part of the joke: "smiling like a marketing department," "triumphantly naïve, like peace-through-beverage," "wholesome as freshly baked ideology." The argument is genuine even as the delivery is ironic: nature's abundance — sun, rain, sparrows — cannot be owned, and the song proposes this as the right model for culture.

Lyrics

[VERSE 1 – bright, earnest, strummy guitar]
I'd like to share a little tune
With everyone around
A melody that drifts like wind
No owner to be found

[VERSE 2 – gentle choir joins, smiling like a marketing department]
I'd like to hum a simple line
That anybody knows
A song that lived before the laws
And every time it grows

[CHORUS – full advertising-choir sincerity, arms open on a hillside]
You can't copystrike the sun
Or trademark every star
You can't put fences 'round the sky
To tell us where we are

You can't copyright the rain
Or patent falling snow
And you can't lock music in a vault
To sell it back for more

[VERSE 3 – a single child's voice, devastatingly pure]
I'd like to hear the world just sing
Without a licence key
A chorus made of breath and time
Completely DRM-free

[BRIDGE – soft key change, wholesome as freshly baked ideology]
Let's take the locks off every mind
And open every ear
A song that wants to wander
Should be something we revere

[CHORUS – triumphantly naïve, like peace-through-beverage]
You can't copystrike the sun
Or watermark the dawn
You can't tell forests who can hear
The sparrows' morning song

You can't own culture's spark
Or rent out wonder's flame
And you can't sue inspiration
Just for whispering your name

[OUTRO – gentle children's chorus over swelling strings]
So let the music move
Wherever hearts are spun
For nobody can claim the light
You can't copystrike the sun

Detail

The stage directions are doing most of the intellectual work here. "Smiling like a marketing department," "triumphantly naïve, like peace-through-beverage," and "wholesome as freshly baked ideology" all describe the song's own delivery with cheerful self-awareness — the song knows it is using the form of inspirational advertising to make an argument against intellectual property maximalism, and it does not pretend otherwise.

This is the Colloquium's adjacent territory to "Banned from Bandcamp": both address the mechanics of who controls music and on what grounds. Where that song is autobiographical grievance, this one is polemic dressed as campfire singalong. "Completely DRM-free" in a verse otherwise about breath and time is the tell — the argument is embedded in the pastoral.

The commons framing (sun, rain, sparrows, the sparrows' morning song) draws on a long tradition of natural-law arguments for shared culture: that certain things precede ownership and cannot be enclosed. The song does not engage with the counter-arguments — it simply asserts the commons and invites you to sing along, which is itself a demonstration of the thesis.

Cross-references

• Song of the Day (album)