Ownership Controversy
In September 2006, the song's co-writer Paul Vance read his own mistaken obituary. The obituary was of another man, Paul Van Valkenburgh, who claimed to have written the song under the name Paul Vance. The impostor explained his lack of royalty payments for the song by claiming that he'd sold the rights as a teenager. Vance, the song's true co-author, has earned several million dollars from the song since 1960, describing it as "a money machine."
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Famous quotes containing the words ownership and/or controversy:
“They had their fortunes to make, everything to gain and nothing to lose. They were schooled in and anxious for debates; forcible in argument; reckless and brilliant. For them it was but a short and natural step from swaying juries in courtroom battles over the ownership of land to swaying constituents in contests for office. For the lawyer, oratory was the escalator that could lift a political candidate to higher ground.”
—Federal Writers’ Project Of The Wor, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“And therefore, as when there is a controversy in an account, the parties must by their own accord, set up for right Reason, the Reason of some Arbitrator, or Judge, to whose sentence, they will both stand, or their controversy must either come to blows, or be undecided, for want of a right Reason constituted by Nature; so is it also in all debates of what kind soever.”
—Thomas Hobbes (1579–1688)