No really. What Warner/Chappell Music does is run a protection racket. They threaten to sue anyone who uses a public domain song such as Happy Birthday and get people to pay because it is safer and easier to pay than to fight. All protection rackets are based on this principle, it is safer and easier to pay than to fight.

Many public domain songs are used for the protection racket by many publishers. The racket works because, as in Wall Street, the government is always looking the other way and people have a habit of believing in politicians by faith.