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This comparison is a poor metaphor for a real world business issue.

A car dealer is nowhere near the same as a publisher. A song is not a car. Cars do not constantly make income after they're sold, every time they're used. Car Dealers don't make money every time a car is used after they've sold a car. Cars don't pay a royalty every time they're started. They don't pay multiple streams of income for the tires, the motor, the wipers, the windshield, etc. Songs don't wear out parts that need replacement.

Tell us all why its a bad thing to cover your butt with publishing and being your own publisher, when it costs nothing to start a publishing name and get it registered with a PRO? When doing so means you will collect what you're due. And should a time ever come outside of your own ability to track a song that is gaining traction, then you can do an admin deal with a bigger publisher.

As for selling used CDs, do people sell them? Sure. Are they breaking the law in doing so? Who knows. But if its being done on a regular basis similar to a small business, yeah you might be breaking a law or two if you weren't getting a DBA or a license of some sort. There's also the copyright law issues if one is buying CDs, digitizing or copying them, then turning around selling them (because that's illegal despite the number of people who do it). All that being typed - streaming services are now the main way people obtain their music, thus the reselling of CDs will become mute in the near future anyway. There are hidden legal ramifications to your off-the-cuff "hot this morning" statement.

"Borrowing" a mechanical license implies you took the Harry Fox license for free - when it was already free. Then you repurposed it. Now you're attempting to sell something that came free for a fee of $20 on technology that people stopped using en mass 20 years ago and pawning it off as a publishing type of agreement that is ludicrous. Brian called you out on it, I'm going to call you out on it. If ever there was bad advice, claiming a modified mechanical license is the same as a publishing admin agreement is outright weird and quite possibly illegal. They are not one in the same. Are you an attorney that we're not aware of.

Plus, as most modern businesses do, the Mechanical Licensing forms for Harry Fox are all online at their website. Same with Music Reports, the other Mechanical License organization in the U.S. But then Donna was asking about publishing, not Mechanicals.

Registering a song's publishing at your local country's PRO covers you for a song released outside of the states. Such that if a band does do a cover of your song in say Canada, as Donna is looking at, when they get any traction on their version of the song, SOCAN [plus the 4 mechanical rights companies of Canada: SODRAC 2003 inc, CMRRA, CMRRA-SODRAC, Connect Music Licensing] (if the band properly deals with the song information) will track that money, see that its registered to a U.S. writer and publisher - then pay it to the appropriate PRO(s) and mechanical services in the U.S. who then in turn pay the writer and publisher. It takes longer to get money going this route, but covers Donna on all sides and avenues of income on her creations.

If you're going to say I'm providing bad advice (or as you termed it "Mis-Information"), you best hit back with actual facts of what I'm getting wrong along with real world examples. Stop using metaphor comparisons with insults. Step up to the plate and air your factual grievances in the thread I started in the General Forum about Jody's "Mis-information."