one easy way to do it is to send yourself a package with your own cd.. thats signed on the cd and signed on the artwork and everything.. then get it stamped at the post office and have them send it to your home adress.. and when it comes home dont open it... beats paying tonnnes of euros for a copyright on your song... maybe share some knowlegde on how everyone else does it, i think its really important for if someone steals your shit... on the internet it could definately be possible.. then when someone else uses your stuff you have something to stand on with that package that was sent to you... (by yourself)... does this work the same around the whole world in belgium, usa... etc.. i think a topic on this wouldnt be too bad for the newbies in music
intellectual property is tough.. there are a lot of loop wholes in the copyright world...
i dont even bother though... ui mean if it came down to it, as long as you have the priginal project file for your song no one can take it... nothing beats that in court...
i dont know about that one tho, i mean your original project file maybe not good enough to compete against another person who made something similair sounding in another project file... but you know i think it more concerns melody than the whole piece of music... if you have a lol 'hit' then if someone steals that melody you can be in big shit... but i dont think that really applies to drum and bass i guess. more pop..
1. Sending yourself a sealed package with the music recorded on the CD will definitely help you prove intellectual rights on court, but not ownership. That's because you actually don't copyright the material, you just supply yourself with material proof for the court. You can appeal to fight back the ownership steal from the other guy later on, but the results can be varying (depends on the date of the package... if, when compared to the other guy's copyright date, the package was sent way before, you got a chance. If it was sent something like 3 months or less, you have no chance of proving that the material is yours.)
2. There are no loopholes in the copyright law (world), but unprecised institutes, and that's mainly because intellectual properties rights are based on creativity, something which is not allowed to be constrained (limited) with law.
3. It doesn't matter if you have your project file on court - the copyright belongs to the man that registered the tune in the public copyrights holder.. he (you?) doesn't supply the project file there, but the pure audio file, which means that even if the he stole the project file, he will have the copyright on that tune, if no one else requested (and got) copyright on it.
The project file is something similar to the sealed package - a not so good material proof.
This is in our (Macedonian) law, that I study, but I also have studied foreign law (especially the two dominant law systems, the Continental law (Europe) and the Common Law (England, USA, etc.)) and they are very similar, if not the same (USA, for example) with this concept.
__ Thinking about becoming an Image-Line/FL Studio customer? Want a 10% reduction in price? Use this affiliate link:
Depends on the country, really. For instance, in Macedonia, ZAMP (the association for musical copyrights) charges no money for getting a copyright on your tune, but gets a certain percent of its sales.
__ Thinking about becoming an Image-Line/FL Studio customer? Want a 10% reduction in price? Use this affiliate link:
mailing it to yourself is debateable. SO HERE I AM.
i have had this argument with teachers, basicly, you can tamper with the mail. easy.
a. as soon as you write a song in a tangible form, ie. record, it's copyrighted. all you need is proof you wrote teh song. so sending yourself the album does jack shit. mailyuorself the files, the scrap lyric sheet, a musical score, the evidance that you made the song.
a napkin with some lyrics on it is more evidance than a governemnt offical registered peice of mail with a cd.
Tangible form it's copyrighted. if you goto court with the master tapes of the track adn the ther people have nothing you win the Master Copyright, but Artist Copyright is proven with rough of the song idea. the melody and lyrics.
that's basicly it. there's also, in the states, the washing congression library I think it's claled. it regiesters songs copyrights, which still doesn't rpove as much but it helps still. and it's archive song titles and lengths. most every country has something liket his.
you can find out about your copyrights fromy uor local copyright organisation it's different from region to rgion, but there all usually free and non-profit.
you can call them up, probably join if you care about your music. good way to meet artists! some charge precent of the profit to cover office fees.
__
Latest Songs of filth and taboo depravity SpankMyFilth on SoundCloud
She's got a nasty mouth... FREE DOWNLOADS
This post has been edited 1 time(s), it was last edited by Halph-Price: 08-04-2007 12:49.
just using this site is a good way to copyright, i think it shows and has evidance and witnesses of you coming out with a song.
actually it's a good thing to back up the session files more than anything. that is your golden ticket of proof. that letter thing is oooooooooold that's from before the internet and electronic property.
__
Latest Songs of filth and taboo depravity SpankMyFilth on SoundCloud
She's got a nasty mouth... FREE DOWNLOADS
This post has been edited 1 time(s), it was last edited by Halph-Price: 08-04-2007 13:01.
There are actually two sides here: the creator of the song and the owner of the copyright.
You may be the creator, but if someone else has owned the copyright over your tune, there are not much chances you to take that copyright. It's like musicians and their music houses - they sing a paper agreement which says that the musician gives the copyright of the song(s) to the music house, and receives money for that. He can't retake that copyright back again. Now the music house has the right to reproduce that song wherever it wants and how many times it wants without asking the musician about that (if something else isn't stated in the signed agreement, of course).
So, the real issue here is, if someone stole your tune and registered a copyright of it, you can charge them on court by trying to prove that he didn't ask YOU for that (there was no agreement), so he had no right to copyright the tune that was yours. That's the only issue here. Here, in play come the project files, postal records and whatever else - to prove that you really created the tune. But the court subject will be about the right to protect the tune with a copyright, and not to whom that tune belongs (because arts don't belong to no one, only copyrights).
__ Thinking about becoming an Image-Line/FL Studio customer? Want a 10% reduction in price? Use this affiliate link:
Im a trainee Lawyer in the UK at the moment so i can offer my perspective on this one from a UK point of view.
Does copyright exist in a song?
The position is covered by the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 ('CDPA'), some parts of which have been amended or inserted by EU harmonising law.
Only certain works are protected by copyright and amongt other things "original musical works" fall into the categories of works protected. This means that the tune for a song is covered, but the lyrics will be covered the category "original literary work."
To qualify for copyright protection, an "musical work" ie tune must be fixed. This means that it must be recorded somehow e.g. on a tape, writing down the musical notation or saved on a Comp.
NB - Copyright is created instantly the moment someone fixes a musical work. It doesnt need to be registered for copyright to exist. However i will explain why registration is important later on.
s9 CDPA says that the "author" is the person who creates the work. However s11(2) states that an employee who creates copyright during his employment, then the employer will own the copyright.
Infringing copyright
The owner of copyright in a song can prevent other people from infringing his/her copyright.
An infringment occurs when there is
1. Copying
2. there is a connection between the two works AND
3. substantial part of the work has been copied.
When the courts look at whether there is a connection, they look to see the
a) similiarities between the two works AND
b) if one person had access to the others work.
Therefore it is important to establish a timeline when the two works were created and the authors had the opperunity to view the other person work. It is therefore importnat to have evidence relating to when you fixed your work ie recorded it.
As artificial has already said - one way to prove when a musical work was created is to send a CD or Disk of your work to yourself using registered post.
Another and much better way is to "register" your copyright. As i said earlier this doesnt mean that copyright is created in your music. It merely means that if you register the copyright to your music, the UK Copyright Service will be able to provide independant and reliable evidence as to the ownership and date of creation. The advantage of registration is that much more stronger evidence of ownership and creation than sending yourself a package. The disadvantage is that it costs up to £50 to register for up to 10 years.
If you can prove infringment the remedies available to you are :
Damages or part of the profits,
An injunction to stop the person infringing your copyright.
Originally posted by cjstyles
Im a trainee Lawyer in the UK at the moment so i can offer my perspective on this one from a UK point of view.
Oh, a fellow lawyer. Nice
quote:
Originally posted by cjstyles
NB - Copyright is created instantly the moment someone fixes a musical work. It doesnt need to be registered for copyright to exist. However i will explain why registration is important later on.
Exactly what I say. The original copyright is yours, but, unless you can prove that you made that song (and didn't agree with anyone else anything about it), the copyright belongs to the guy that registered first in your local copyright service.
__ Thinking about becoming an Image-Line/FL Studio customer? Want a 10% reduction in price? Use this affiliate link:
pretty usefull stuff here... i would always send that stuff through postal... but recently ive also heard that you can send your stuff through the internet to buma stemra... but currently no court has taken it into consideration yet.. so its effectivity in court is still vague and therefore im skeptical about it.
does anyone know if there is a way of checking if a song is already copyrighted? and if the copyright only last for ten years whats the chance of stuff that was made 20 years ago still being copyrighted??
