Copyrights ~ That gray area?

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Chipfryer
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Copyrights ~ That gray area?

Post by Chipfryer »

Here's the story. Where I am they have this wonderful post your song and its copyrighted regime. However someone just told us that they don't give you the actual paperwork for now what appears to be TWO YEARS! :evil:

I know a lot of you on here are from all over the world so how do you do it? Do you trust it? Are you even worried about it? I'm not so certain that I am frankly after all said and done with this. You would need an army of lawyers in any and who has the money for that anyway unless you are established?

What are your thoughts on this please?
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thorgal
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Re: Copyrights ~ That gray area?

Post by thorgal »

what are you afraid of ? that someone makes money out of stealing your work ?
What is the purpose of your publishing your music ?
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Chipfryer
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Re: Copyrights ~ That gray area?

Post by Chipfryer »

Heck no the whole point is getting someone to listen to it isn't it. :D

Nice one
thorgal wrote:what are you afraid of ? that someone makes money out of stealing your work ?
What is the purpose of your publishing your music ?
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Re: Copyrights ~ That gray area?

Post by autostatic »

Chipfryer wrote:Here's the story. Where I am they have this wonderful post your song and its copyrighted regime. However someone just told us that they don't give you the actual paperwork for now what appears to be TWO YEARS! :evil:
Which "post your song" service are you referring to? And what kind of paperwork?
Chipfryer wrote:I know a lot of you on here are from all over the world so how do you do it?
You mean licensing and publishing my music? I release everything under a Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
Chipfryer wrote:Do you trust it? Are you even worried about it? I'm not so certain that I am frankly after all said and done with this. You would need an army of lawyers in any and who has the money for that anyway unless you are established?
Trust what? Worried about what? I was worried about all the songs of our band that had a non CC license, luckily the Dutch copyright organisation (BUMA) with which we registred all our songs started a CC pilot so I transfered all our songs to a CC license.

Edit: I think I understand, you're referring to a publishing company? Then I think it's best to publish the songs yourself. I don't see the benefit of publishing with a publishing company, unless you have some airplay and play regularly.
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Chipfryer
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Re: Copyrights ~ That gray area?

Post by Chipfryer »

This one Auto:
http://www.copyright.gov/
I did just one song with them many months ago and have never heard a thing from them. Yesterday a friend told me that they were TWO YEARS behind. :D

I'd not seen that link before. Is that a worldwide license please?
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Re: Copyrights ~ That gray area?

Post by autostatic »

Chipfryer wrote:This one Auto:
http://www.copyright.gov/
I did just one song with them many months ago and have never heard a thing from them. Yesterday a friend told me that they were TWO YEARS behind. :D
You mean when you will receive your "certificats"?
Chipfryer wrote:I'd not seen that link before. Is that a worldwide license please?
CC Licenses work alongside copyright

Creative Commons licenses are not an alternative to copyright. They work alongside copyright, so you can modify your copyright terms to best suit your needs. We’ve collaborated with intellectual property experts all around the world to ensure that our licenses work globally.
It's not a copyright, it's a license. Actually, in some cases it's even the contrary of copyright and sometimes referred to as copyleft.
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Chipfryer
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Re: Copyrights ~ That gray area?

Post by Chipfryer »

Indeed Auto.
The chap I know spent a small fortune on copyrights and has just found that out. I can't see how it would take that amount of time and after all there are no guarantees in any case.
Sounds wrong to me.

Thanks for the links.
AutoStatic wrote:You mean when you will receive your "certificats"?
it's even the contrary of copyright and sometimes referred to as copyleft.
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Re: Copyrights ~ That gray area?

Post by Shadow_7 »

BITD, if you sent yourself a certified letter with the printed version of your song, that was considered your copyright. Copyright is implied to some degree by default YMMV depending on your country. copyright.gov is the US copyright registration organization, AFAIK. You don't have to register to have a copyright, it just makes it easier and quicker if you have to sue someone for violating your copyright.

Of course copyright means that you have commercial intent, otherwise release it in public domain sort of way. Creative Commons and other routes to ensure that you have some retention of rights. So no one can slap their name on it and call it their own work. Or run off and make a fortune (haha) on your work while cutting you out for all intents. Or I could be completely wrong. And it varies between countries. It's not uncommon for US based legal organizations to be 2 to 5 or more YEARS behind in processing things. And I'm not sure how that relates to the statute of limitations associated with some claims.

Disclaimer: Not a lawyer. Might have changed from 20 years ago. Could bear no relation to reality.
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Re: Copyrights ~ That gray area?

Post by raboof »

Shadow_7 wrote:You don't have to register to have a copyright, it just makes it easier and quicker if you have to sue someone for violating your copyright.
This is an important point here: services like mailing your song to yourself or to a copyright organization is always optional. This is stipulated by the Berne convention. From that page:
wikipedia wrote:Copyright under the Berne Convention must be automatic; it is prohibited to require formal registration (note however that when the United States joined the Convention in 1988, they continued to make statutory damages and attorney's fees only available for registered works).
Of course copyright means that you have commercial intent, otherwise release it in public domain sort of way. Creative Commons and other routes to ensure that you have some retention of rights.
CC actually depends on copyright to work. Copyright gives you the power to say "i created this, so you cannot copy it, unless ...". CC provides standardized ways to formulate your 'unless' :).

(not a lawyer, just took some Masters'-level IP rights classes in university)
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Re: Copyrights ~ That gray area?

Post by Capoeira »

raboof wrote:
Shadow_7 wrote: This is an important point here: services like mailing your song to yourself or to a copyright organization is always optional.
how about emailing it to yourself?
and how about the upload to myspace?
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Re: Copyrights ~ That gray area?

Post by raboof »

Capoeira wrote:how about emailing it to yourself?
AFAIK that's not really good for anything.
and how about the upload to myspace?
How about it? The work is already copyrighted to you (because that's automatic). Myspace might have additional terms and conditions which you might have agreed to by creating your account and/or uploading your song, but I'm not familiar with those.
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Re: Copyrights ~ That gray area?

Post by wolftune »

Curious, for the OP,
Did you ever make sense of this? Copyright registration with copyright.gov is purely for having a legal record. It is meaningless in terms of your rights. Having records just helps if you ever need to defend your rights.
So, why were you bothering anyway?
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