The dialogue in About a Boy, the movie, not the television series, is largely between a boy, Marcus Brewer, and his wealthy 40-something neighbour, Will Freeman, who has not worked a single day in his life, living off the royalties of a song.

Freeman says: “[My] dad wrote a song in 1958, and it’s quite a famous song and I basically live off the royalties of that . . . It’s Santa’s Super Sleigh . . . Sorry. I don’t understand. How does that make you money? Do carol singers have to pay you 10%? They should, but you can’t always catch the little bastards.”

Come to think of it, there is a song that you have no doubt sung that might well require you to have to pay royalties. It is a song for which you might well be owing quite a few rands, or rather US dollars. The amount due by you would, of course, depends on your age, the size of your family (including your extended family), the size of your social circle and the size of your business circle.

And, yes, you have sung the song for many years. It is, of course, Happy Birthday to You, also simply known as Happy Birthday. According to the Guinness World Records, this song is the most recognised song in the English language, followed by – would you believe it? – For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow. It is also the highest-earning single song in history, with earnings, since its creation, of more than $50-million.

It is said that the melody comes from the song Good Morning to All, attributed to American sisters Patty and Mildred J Hill in 1893, with the song first appearing in print in 1912. Since the early lyrics excluded any credits or copyright notices, an opportunistic company called Sumy Company registered a copyright in 1935, crediting Preston Ware Orem and a Mrs RR Forman. Then, in 1988, Warner/Chappell Music bought the company, claiming that the US copyright would not expire until 2030 and that, in the European Union (UK), the copyright of the song was set to expire by December 31 this year.

However, the American copyright status of the song started to attract intense attention with the passing of the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act in 1998. American law professor Robert Brauneis, who extensively researched Happy Birthday to You, concluded in 2010 that “it is almost certainly no longer under copyright”. In 2013, Good Morning to You Productions, a company that was producing a documentary about Good Morning to All at the time, sued Warner/Chappell Music for falsely claiming copyright to Happy Birthday to You. In September 2015, a US Federal judge declared that Warner/Chappell Music’s copyright claim was invalid, ruling that “the copyright registration applied only to a specific piano arrangement of the song, and not to its lyrics and melody”. In February this year, Warner/Chappell Music settled for $14-million, paving the way for Happy Birthday to You to become public domain.

This is quite an introduction to a column on the ‘ageing’ Customs and Excise Acts of 2014, but at least it puts your mind at ease that the debt that was due to you having sung Happy Birthday to You for all these years is no longer.

Well, still on the subject of birthdays, there are two that I missed recently. Yes, I do not diarise these things. Maybe I should. Fortunately, it is birthdays and not anniversaries that I had missed. Missing an anniversary can be quite a painful affair. At least with birthdays you can offer belated birthday wishes, which I do. I do so for the Customs Duty Act, 2014, and the Customs Control Act, 2014. These are birthdays, since both these Act are yet to be enacted; so, in my book, there are no anniversaries yet.

Both Acts were published in 2014, the Customs Duty Act, 2014, on July 10 and the Customs Control Act, 2014, on July 23. As I wrote this article on August 3, the Customs Duty Act, 2014, was 755 days old and the Customs Control Act, 2014, 742 days old. And it had been 4 252 days (or just over eleven-and-a-half years) since their drafting started. Not being a lawyer, it is quite intriguing for me that an Act is published as an Act but then not enacted. Even though both these Act have not been enacted, they have been subject to a number of amendments, which is of inte- rest in itself. They will be amended Acts, even before they are introduced.

So, what is causing the delay in enacting these Acts? It is possible that this is partly due to the formalisation of the rules to these Acts? It is interesting that the Acts were first published and only then were the rules to these Acts (well, only a limited section of the rules to these Acts) published for public comment. If past practice is anything to go by, the rules to these Acts should include customs and excise forms, of which I have not seen any drafts. While on the rules to these Acts, according to the information pertaining to External Workshops – Rules to the Customs Control and Duty Acts, 2014, on the South African Revenue Service website, the last workshop was held on September 23, 2015, (315 days previously at the time of writing).

Could it be that a few more birthdays would be celebrated before the 2014 Acts are introduced?