Originally Posted by Marc Barnette
Copyright.The single biggest waste of money and a writers attention. Put it out there and you are going to have people use it without your permission. forget about stealing just a line or a part of your song. They are going to just use it. What exactly are you going to do about it?
MAB
Originally Posted by John Cook
Also, I apologize for the rant, this is something that used get to me when I'd see people spend hundreds of dollars copyrighting cliche, boring songs and then complain when they couldn't pay their rent.

There needs to be clarification of when to copyright. Calling it a big waste of money and such is really a matter of perspective.

I know of an entity that was sued by an artist. The artist attempted to sue them for using his song. They admit they used it. The catch is - the artist did not have the song copyrighted, thus too bad for him. He can't extract money from the entity. Let's just say that the entity has a lot of money to be spending on music.

It's a good thing I heard that from the mouth of an executive. It's even better knowing that I won't be giving them any music in our deal until it's copyrighted. In fact they needed a certain kind of music cue last week in which, as it happened, I had just written & finished for another situation that day. I immediately registered it with SESAC, MyWerx, and the LOC (electronic submission). Then I sent it over to them. To get two licenses off a piece of music immediately upon completion is obviously rare, but I wouldn't have sent it out in that case without copyrighting it.

Again, I understand that for a lot of hobby or part time writers it's probably not worth it. However it's not wise to say it's a waste without clarifying when it's a waste.

Jody Whitesides
A Funky Audio Lap Dance For Your Ears!
www.jodywhitesides.com