JPF Home Page Forums General Messages Mentor Questions Forum Does posting make your songs safe?

I have recently had several discussions with fellow JPF writers about copyrights. My fellow writers believe that posting on a site, such as JPF, protects their work as of that date. I told them I did not believe this to be the case. I understand about a poor mans copyright versus the traditional copyright. Is there any protection for your work once it is posted if you do not have any type of copyright?

Rod

NOTE FROM JPF FOUNDER BRIAN: PLEASE READ THE MULTIPLE RESPONSEs DOWN BELOW BY STU (STUART SHAPIRO) WHO IS THE ONLY ATTORNEY TO RESPOND TO THIS QUESTION DIRECTLY. BEWARE! THERE IS MUCH DISINFORMATION AND OPINION PASSING AS FACT BOTH ON THE INTERNET AT LARGE AND EVEN BELOW IN THE OTHER RESPONSES. IT'S ALWAYS WORTH THE MONEY TO CONSULT WITH YOUR OWN QUALIFIED ATTORNEY BEFORE RISKING YOUR WORK TO A BAD PIECE OF INFO, NO MATTER HOW WELL INTENTIONED. STUART HAPPENS TO BE THE ATTORNEY I PERSONALLY USE TO ANSWER MY OWN LEGAL QUESTIONS. SPEND A LITTLE MONEY, TIME AND EFFORT TO GET THE RIGHT ANSWERS EARLY AND SAVE A CAREER FULL OF MISTAKES AND PROBLEMS. -Brian

I think you are confusing copyright with the "registration" of a copyright with the LOC. Any song/lyric/poem,... obtains a "copyright" as soon as it is put down in a fixed medium (here at JPF!).

Why register at all then, you ask? Legally you can't sue someone for infringement unless it is registered (and expedited registration is $500 or something for a song). I guess registering collections (multiple songs at one time) would be a good idea if you feel that "registration need", but are you really protected?? Any lawsuit for infringement would be super expensive and tough in a court setting. Would you collect? If you record and sell large numbers of CD, then I would suppose you do some registering. A lot of us don't do it, though.

Advantages: http://www.publaw.com/advantage.html

Kevin

Kevin,

Thank you very much. That cleared things up for me.

Rod

There is no such thing as a "poor man's copyright." It does not exist in law. Under the current copyright law, you own the copyright in the work from the moment it is fixed in a tangible medium (sung onto a tape or CD, written down on a piece of paper, etc.) Make sure you have it fixed in a tangible medium before posting. While you could use the posting date in a lawsuit as some evidence of a prior date that you had the work to which someone else is claiming ownership, registration is prima facie proof of ownership - which means if someone else has registered it before you, you have an uphill battle in court because the Court must consider the registered owner to be the owner in fact (until you can convince the Court otherwise by sufficient proof). In addition, as stated above, you must register the work before you can take legal action, which means that you forfeit any statutory damages to which you would be entitled if the infringement occurs before the registration. The bottom line is that you should, at the very least, send in for the registration before you post.

Stu,
Great information. I will pass it along. Thank you very much,

Rod

Very interesting post guys. Thanks for the info.

If you are serious about your songs you need to register them with the U.S. Copyright Office. The PA form or the PA Short form is still used or you can register them electronicly if you can get it set up. You will have to order the forms from the Copyright Office as they are no longer avaliable on line. You can order them thru the Web Site.

Deleted false info.

Read Stu's replies for the facts.

Thanks Stu!

Best, John

In an era where pretty much anybody can pretty much use anything for their own use, copyrights are really not holding much together anymore. When people can zip your material, use it on their own You Tube videos without permissions, rappers sample tracks, I don't know how much copyrights are even valid anymore.
Another fight that is seemingly being lost.

I have a friend who just got her copyrights registered from the Library of Congress this week. She filed them three years ago. They are backed up a minimum of two years to file copyrights, patents, etc.

MAB

John,
I register songs in collections usually of 3 or 4. Songs are identified individually by Title. If a Publisher signs one of the songs in the collection that is the only song he has rights to. The songwriter is free to sing the other songs or retain ownership of them until the copyright runs out or he signs them to a publisher.

Registering Collections is a convenivent way of saving money for a registration.

"He said when a collection of songs are registered in a "suite", it becomes one and can't be separated into parts." Huh?

Think about it this way-
If you register the copyright to a book, can somebody take a chapter and use it without your permission? Of course not. If you register several songs together as one work, can somebody take one of the songs and claim that they're not infringing? No way.
Now consider this - If you are the author of the book, and you decide to take one of your chapters and separate it out, say for serial publication in a magazine, can anyone tell you that you can't do that and you have to use the entire book every time? Of course not.
This "suite" advice doesn't make sense.
There is nothing to prevent you, as the owner of the copyright, from dealing separately with a part of your registered work. As long as you can sufficiently define that part of the work you are dealing with, you can license part of it the same way you could license the whole thing.

Thanks for clarifying that Stu.

Wondering... if a publisher wants to have copyrights (registrations) on the tracks they sign, would there be a problem letting them register a "chapter" of your suite.

In other words; can several different publishers own separate copyrights to "chapters" of your suite?

Best, John

Stu:
To answer your question, publishers usually want exclusive publication rights to songs - although there are plenty on non-exclusive publishing deals out there. You can license any part of any work to any publisher as long as you can sufficiently describe in the license agreement exactly what is being licensed.

John,

A lot of this is going in ways I don't understand. There is only one copyright on any song. The melody and lyrics. They are not done separately or as "Chapters." Different publishers can only share the copyright on one song at a time.

Most professional writers never copyright songs until they are ready to be commercially released. When you write 200 songs a year and most of them go no where there is no sense in it. That is what publishers do.

MAB

Thanks Marc.

What I'm wondering is the songwriter that registers his/her songs as a collection to save money, then a publisher signs (and registers) one of the songs in the collection - who would technically own the copyright to this song (since the earlier copyright registration carries more weight)?

John

Stu:
You can license any part of any work to any publisher as long as you can sufficiently describe in the license agreement exactly what is being licensed.

John,

The publisher and the writer would share in copyrights. That is what publishing is. There are two halfs of a song. The publishers share and the writer's share. It could be looked at as the "Business office" and the "Creative department."

The writer is responsible for all manner of the creative process, from writing the song, getting it recorded, anything that involves the creation and presentation of that work.
You cannot (Legally) "Sell" or giveaway that portion of a work.

The publisher is the administrative arm of the partnership. It is involved in exploiting the business possibilities of the song. It spends times with the business side of the industry,record labels, producers,artists, PRO's, etc. Anything that possibly could represent income, radio, live performance, ring tones,movie and film liscencing, songs for video games, toys etc. Anywhere a song is liscenced.

It is a world of Minutia, (try hiring a $500 an hour lawyer to collect your thirty five dollars from the country of Greece, a socialist country. YOU try collecting from a government.)it is a world of frustration ("No thanks, we are not listening any more for this project" after waiting three months for an appointment) and it is a world of years and a LOT of money making contacts that open those doors. Everything is on reputation.

Publishers generally approach everything on a song by song basis. If they hire a writer for a staff job, they don't take all the songs the writer has. A writer usually has a quota, 12-15 songs a year. But that is on the onus of the publisher on what they accept. And the contract would be for 100% ownership of songs. But that has a caveat.

For political reasons, as well as talent reasons, you co-write almost everything. Would you rather to pitch a song about falling in love with a Hollywood actress and trying to be a guitar player on the road that you don't really know that much about, since you have never been married to a Hollywood actress, and the closest thing you have been to the "road" would have been a trip to Miami with your family when you were twelve?

Or would you rather have written that song with Brad Paisley,who is married to a Hollywood actress and plays guitar on the road?

Which one do you think will achieve more credibility?

So you are going to co-write, particularly with artists. That means for that 12 songs, you now have to turn in at least 24 songs. Since they only take about one in 4 songs, that means you have to write 30-40-50, etc. Expand that to three writers, and multiple publishers and your share decreases with each one added.

A publisher is only going to share in the copyright of the songs he or she is personally involved in business wise.

There are a lot of different deals and they can get weird.

I used to be like everyone and thought I had to have copyrights on everything. Then I moved to Nashville. When you hear almost every concievable subject, every concievable twist,every concievable melody, and EVERYTHING sounds like something else,then when you hear the "big dogs" do it, especially on a writer's night, you see the difference immediately. You stop making a big deal on copyrights.

My take is that they happen when they are supposed to. When you get actual publishing interest in a song or a writer,it can be months before anything actually happens. When you are talking about songs being released into the public, it can take years.

No one is going to release anything without all kinds of legal stuff being done first. That requires lawyers and meetings. And more lawyers and meetings.

I signed a half dozen songs to SONY on Frankie Ballard a year ago. Each contract is about 12 pages long and covers all kinds of stuff from sync liscences to ring tones and everything in between. None of those songs are currently out on the charts. The record label is doing what all labels are doing right now, releasing one single at a time. So it may be a while before anything gets out there. In the meantime I write more songs work with more people, do my job every day giving long answer to questions for you guys.

So all of this copyright stuff to me is premature. First write a lot of songs. Then for the few that are worth copyrighting and have interest, copyright. But in anything don't expect a lot of satisfaction. We are in a day and age where rappers take existing tracks and put their own lyrics to them. Where people use whatever song they want for whatever they want to use it for with no permission at all on You Tube videos. Where politicians are following that logic that all creative work should be free and opposing us in the halls of Congress and the Parliments of countries worldwide.

With all the things going on in music, getting a piece of paper that says something is protected is kind of the equivalant of someone yelling "halt" and "stay in line" at a 5:00 am Walmart Christmas sale. Yeah, someone may hear you say something. But whether anyone really cares or not is another matter.

MAB

For anyone really interested in the reality of life going on with issues like this, I am a subscriber to an industry newsletter called "The Dean's List." It is composed by a man who is involved in all these legal issues. It comes out every week and is frankly one of the more depressing things you will ever read. But it covers all these legal issues and is one of the main reference pieces almost all songwriters and publishers are using. It is like a Bible with a lot of topics and a lot of information. If you can wade through it, you are much better than I am.

But I am happy to forward it to you and it costs nothing to subscribe. Anyone who wants it, send me a personal email at MBarne4908@aol.com.

But let me warn you. If you think you are confused or depressed now, you may not want to get this thing. Ignorance can be bliss and sometimes I wish I didn't know as much as I do.

Let me know.

MAB

Humm,
It appears some things in Copyright © needs to be cleared up. Today the moment you complete a song/musical work and put it in tangable form you automaticly own the Copyright.

Registration, with the U.S. Copyright Office merely establishes a date of copyright that allows the writer unrefutable rights in case of a dispute somewhere down the line.

If you assign the copyright to a Publisher, you are, in effect selling your Copyright to the Publisher in return for Royalities in the work.

A Publisher doesn't register the work again. Usually a work can only be registered once but there are some instances where a writer may want to re-register if changes are made in the work. These instances are covered in the instructions for the PA and PA Short forms. The songwriter uses the Pa form or the new Electronic form.

If a Record Label records and releases the song and usually songs by more than one writer on a CD they will use the SR form to Register the Release. The songwriter nor the publisher is involved in this type Registration.

A form of the PA form Regular or Short Form protects the songwriter. The SR form protects the Record Label.

In case there was some dispute over copyright an investgator may actually go to the copyright office find the copyright and give testimony in court of his findings.

Copyright isn't complicated but a dispute may be. Other records besides a registration could come into play of who wrote a song and can only be decided in a court if it comes to that.

In Marc's case where he writes with many writer's and they keep records, a registration is only needed if a song is placed. As they desire.

Thanks for the interesting info Marc. I agree with you 100% about not registering songs before a deal is on the table. A waste of money.

However...
My question was "I'm wondering is the songwriter that registers his/her songs as a collection to save money, then a publisher signs (and registers) one of the songs in the collection - who would technically own the copyright to this song (since the earlier copyright registration carries more weight)?".

I'm also wondering, in the realm of a "multiple" song registration, (which btw, many songwriters register their work in this way) can a song be removed from such a multiple copyright registration? Does the Copyright Office allow edits of original copyrights?

Best, John

"Usually a work can only be registered once but there are some instances where a writer may want to re-register if changes are made in the work. These instances are covered in the instructions for the PA and PA Short forms" - Ray

So this re-register would nullify the original Ray?

John

Ray, thank God you know about this stuff because I don't. That is why I have to have a lot of people much smarter than myself to do this.

I actually work tape every song I do which is how I keep track of them. When writing songs, I do the lyrics with dates, and record a work tape version of the song on to a program of mine called "Mix Craft." then I save it to my catalogue which is on I tunes. That keeps a date and record on it. I also usually e-mail a copy of the lyrics and work tape to the other writer which gives another record of it.

In the case of my CD"s (I have about 7) they have been copy written as that collected work. The rest I only worry about if they are getting close.

In this situation I will defer to Ray who has a better legal handle on this than I do. I have only copywritten one song myself since I have lived in Nashville. The rest were done by the publishing companies I worked with.

MAB

OK,
When a Registration is made a copy of the Registration comes back to the Applicant. If a Re-registration is made of the work that copy also comes back to the Applicant. A Re-Registration does not nullify the earlier Registration as both would be avaliable in case of a Court Action.

Once again only in case of a dispute would any of this come into play. And it is rare that a dispute arises. I understand Charlie Danials was Sued for Plagerisim a long time ago. He won his Case but I don't know any of the details. There are songwriter's out there that write something they think is original but alas it may not be and it was written already by someone else or something very close.

I knew someone that sent a song to Ernest Tubb but said Ernest recorded it but they didn't get anything. Most probably because they were fans of Ernest they simply wrote something that wasn't very original that sounded like what Ernest was already doing. Hard to tell.

Write a Hit!

I remember reading some time back how the Lomaxes got hold of Leadbelly's copyrights by publishing the songs (or lyrics, anyway) in a book about folk music. With his permission -- he didn't realize that once they copyrighted the book they owned the songs. Not that one could get away with that now!

But it made me think that maybe I could throw a couple hundred song lyrics into a 'poetry' book at some POD outfit like Lulu and have them all protected. A printed book with a clear publishing date, at no cost unless one chose to send a couple copies to the Library of Congress. Or had a copy or two printed up for oneself.

Ha, who knows, someone might even buy a copy...

The copyright office is backed up 2-3 years processing applications for copyright and registrations, patent applications etc. Millions are spent each year on songs that are never heard from.

I do have two friends that recently got their copyright forms back. In both cases they were filed three years ago.

MAB

Just wanted to clarify that my stream of thought pertains to Music Libraries. Different animal than the kind of publisher Marc is referring to.

My music is published by several music libraries. Not one of them concerns themselves with copyright registration.

They all have a clause in their contract that holds the writer sole responsible for any copyright infringement claims. Basically when the writer signs the contract he/she is declaring that the work is original and he/she has 100% ownership of the copyright.

John

Wow -
There's a lot of really bad information here. I hope nobody reads this post and starts to rely on what they read (not that you should ever rely on anything you read on the internet, you should always consult an attorney before making decisions).
Nevertheless, lets try to straighten out some of this bad info:

John -
To answer your question, publishers usually want exclusive publication rights to songs - although there are plenty on non-exclusive publishing deals out there. You can license any part of any work to any publisher as long as you can sufficiently describe in the license agreement exactly what is being licensed.

Marc -
This is not "an era where pretty much anybody can pretty much use anything for their own use" and I take issue with your statement that "copyrights are really not holding much together anymore." There are plenty of lawsuits over copyright infringement with plenty of lawyers making a living on prosecuting infringement cases.
Although you correctly point out that people are increasingly inclined to zip your material, use it on their own You Tube videos without permissions, and that rappers sample tracks without permission, the problem is that authors either don't find out about it, or don't want to invest the time and energy (and resources) to go after the infringers. This often has to do with the failure to register copyrights, in which case you forfeit the statutory damages which are the most powerful tool for going after the infringement. Copyrights are still very valid, and there are several other weapons in the lawyers arsenal available to prosecute an infringement (like trade dilution claims, conversion,etc., depending on the nature of the infringement).

NEVER tell anyone that registering songs is a waste of money. It's absolutely necessary to properly protect the author's rights.

The Copyright office has nothing to do with Patents, I don't know where those statement above came from but the are absolutely wrong. Patents and Trademarks are processed by the PTO.

In addition, it's false to say that the copyright office is years behind on processing or that any extant delay has anything to do with whether you should register. There has been some lag time when they converted to on-line registration, but the registration dates from the date they receive it not from the date you get confirmation.

If you're sending un-registered songs around, even to publishers, you're just asking to get ripped off. ATTENTION ANYONE WHO READS THESE POSTS - IGNORE ANYONE WHO TELLS YOU THAT IT'S OK TO SEND AROUND UNREGISTERED MATERIAL or that you shouldn't copyright your work until you find that someone else has expressed an interest in it. That's complete bull and a very dangerous attitude. The people who say this are exactly the people who come to see their lawyers after somebody steals their song and tell their attorney "I realize now I should have registered it before I sent it to them...now what do we do?"

Putting a date on a lyric sheet or CD when you write a song is nice, but ineffective. Try to convince the Judge that you didn't just go back and fake it. When you get to Court after not filing to register the song that somebody else registered, you will find that registration is prima facie proof of ownership (meaning the Court must assume - sorry about using that word Brian, but it means something in the legal context- that the first registered owner is the owner in fact unless the person who subsequently registers can accomplish the uphill battle of proving otherwise.


More false information is encompassed by stating that "the suite/collection can't be broken up into parts," and that "if an exclusive publisher signs one song from this "collection", he basically owns the entire collection of songs." It is simply not true that "if selected songs are signed from this collection to more than one publisher, the publisher with the earliest signing becomes the owner of all songs in this suite/collection." That's nonsense. I don't even know how you would put that in a publishing agreement.

Marc- Melody and lyrics can be separately owned. That is why you have to specify the extent of the ownership when you register.

John and Ray- Don't confuse licensing with ownership. Unless you are selling the song outright to the publisher, the author is still the owner. Some publishing deals include a partial sale (e.g. 50% ownership) and some don't. Some only include an exclusive or non-exclusive license to publish.

The Copyright office does not check to see if the submission has been previously registered.

Copyrighting a book containing songs would not in and of itself transfer the copyright to the songs if they were previously fixed in a tangible medium (recorded or written down). The author's ownership of the copyright exists from the date the song is fixed, and transfer of ownership can ONLY be done in a written agreement.

I hope this helps and I hope anyone reading these posts reads down far enough to get this all straightened out. Some of our posters might want to consider going back an editing out some of what they said.

That's great Stu! Answered all the questions on copyright registration I ever had. I deleted much of my previous false info and directed the readers to your reply.

Thanks, John

Thanks everyone for clarification.

i use the electronic copyright registration wihich takes about 10 minutes and normally recieve the cirtificate within 6 weeks to 8 weeks.

In any event as soon as I register a song I can download the application certificate imediately.

The copyuright office ceased to exist in the UK a few years ago (cutbacks) so USA registration is my chosen choice.

You can still register trade makrs and names and patents cause they make money lol.

I always register my songs before posting and then again after completed.

IMO Stu is right. why take the chance.

God Bless Roy and Helen

More confusion from another lawyer:

Nothing is black & white in the law. AND entertainment law and intellectual property law are not the same thing.

Here are the appropriate comments from the copyright office. Read them and decide for yourself if there is a greenlight to split a copyright among publishers. I don’t think so.

“You may register unpublished works as a collection on one application with one title for the entire collection if certain conditions are met. It is not necessary to list the individual titles in your collection. Published works may only be registered as a collection if they were actually first published as a collection and if other requirements have been met. See Circular 1, Copyright Basics, section “Registration Procedures.”

“Unpublished Collections
Under the following conditions, a work may be registered
in unpublished form as a “collection,” with one application
form and one fee:
• The elements of the collection are assembled in an
orderly form;
• The combined elements bear a single title identifying the
collection as a whole;
• The copyright claimant in all the elements and in the collection
as a whole is the same; and
• All the elements are by the same author, or, if they are by
different authors, at least one of the authors has contributed
copyrightable authorship to each element….
An unpublished collection is not indexed under the
individual titles of the contents but under the title of the
collection.”

The issue is going from the unpublished state to the published state. Can you split the folio? Maybe, but you may have to re-register the individual tracks(s) under their published titles

John

Stu,

I always say that if you feel like copyrighting things and that makes you feel better, do it. It is something that you should do if you have something ready to be commercially released. There is a stage to do it.

But in my world, writers write hundreds of songs and less than 4% of them ever get past a computer screen.That is reality. At 2040 songs in 7 years if you think I am going to spend a lot of money on copyrighting anything, you are nuts.

And EVERY SONG sounds like dozens, sometimes hundreds of other songs. There are a LOT of lawsuits. You can sue a ham sandwich. Winning them, and even getting them on a court docket is something else altogether, and people who have had enormous hit songs have had thousands and hundreds of thousands of dollars held up by frivolous lawsuits from people that have no leg to stand on, and the suits are most often thrown out of court.

Liability lawsuits in every walk of life add billions to our ways of life, and from the position of trying to get songs out there, to publishers or to be heard by anyone, you are adding another level of leagalize and another level of difficulty by going through endless lawsuits,is adding even more problems than we already have.

And as you see,ask a lawyer and you will get a lot of answers to the same questions. I am not a lawyer, and having had my career torpedoed by one you are not going to get much support from me on anything legal. If people have a desire to protect themselves, they should do what feels right for them.

My conversations are more to practical application than legal. If every one I have ever encountered who got all caught up in the copywriting process, worried more about learning what was out there, perfecting the craft and understanding how difficult it is to have an original thought, they wouldn't spend thousands of dollars copyrighting "I Love You Baby" and working on new ways to say it instead.

I would rather they concentrated on writing new songs instead of getting into suits that almost never go anywhere except to fatten lawyer's wallets.

MAB

Though I think Stu's right on the money, a few more clouds are hanging over my brain.

Here's more to think about from a poster on another thread:


Here are several libraries that work on a copyright buyout basis with composers..

Megatrax
APM
KPM
Killer Tracks
Extreme
615
Manhattan Production Music
Opus 1 (sometimes)
Firstcom
Master Source

Things would get super complicated if one of these libraries wanted to buy a track that you copyrighted in a folio of works. The legal fees trying to unravel the situation would probably eclipse the phat $1000/track budget of these libraries..

Most of the time the libraries pay upfront for composers to make custom music, but they also actively buy copyrights of already composed material from time to time.

More from lawyer #1:

I am a lawyer and a composer — not in that order, for longer than I care to mention– all in exclusive libraries. I ‘ve been filing my own copyrights since I was 15.

As you may have observed there are two levels of copyright: one for unpublished works and one for published works. It gets deeper if you’re copyrighting the sound recording, as well as the underlying musical work.

The reason why you want to copyright your unpublished works is because you are presumably sending your work out to many libraries before its is published.

To be clear, we are talking about two different situations: 1) where you transfer ownership the copyright to the library, and 2) where the library takes no ownership, but takes a percentage of the publishing.

Under the exclusive model, where you receive upfront money, you will most likely be transferring ownership of your copyright to the library (this must be in writing). You are NOT merely licensing the work to them. You should not get this confused with an exclusive licensing deal, which may be of limited duration.

Under the non-exclusive model, you do not, or should not transfer any ownership.

The problem, as I tried to explain, is that a collection receives one registration number, it is one work. You cannot split that one “work” among different exclusives who want to to own your copyright. You are asking for trouble. It doesn’t matter that youve given each section of the work a different title. It is one work. You transfer the whole enchilada. Further, your deal with the exclusive will require that the copyrighted material is yours to transfer. You cannot do that if you’ve already transferred the copyright to another owner.

Further, the law is designed to prevent the kind of work-around that you describe. In other words, the copyright office doesn’t want for you to copyright 10 unrealated tracks and call it a collection. When I’ve filed copyrights as a collection, all of the “songs” were published by the same entity as a collection, e.g. the “sports collection,” the cinema colection,” etc.

OK — before digress too far. The issue is transfer of copyright ownership, which arises under the exclusive model, not merely publishing shares as under the non-exclusive model.

That is why I said that you MIGHT limit yourself by copyrighting things as a collection.

John

Actually, after re-reading both lawyer's replies, I think they're basically on the same page. The multiple copyright can have disadvantages, but only when there's a transfer of copyright ownership (which happens in more libraries than I was aware of).

John

I'll add my 2-Cents-Worth in...

IF your material is UN-Published, you get a PA-UN Copyright BACK from the (C) Office. IF It's an Anthology, yeah, read ALL the Requirements FIRST.

My Understanding is MOST Publishers'll ONLY want 1-2 songs OFF that Anthology, and THEY'll file for the PA and SR Copyrights AS "Single Songs". You still hold (C) on all the rest of the Anthology, UNLESS your Contract from the Publisher states Otherwise.

As for that "a-Priori" basis for WHO Wrote That Song FIRST, I've for the last Decade posted lyrics HERE...simply to PROVE "Date and Authorship" should there EVER Be a Question. I'm more than a little sure this'll hold up in court.

And YES, IF you file for a Full-Blown US Copyright Office PA or SR, you're for-sure covered. But..you've just saved your Publisher a chunk of His Time & Money/Let them Earn Their 50% I always say. The odds of Your Song being RECOGNIZABLY-Lifted are pretty slim. (You'll then be forced to prove Authorship AND Access...and fork-over about $20K for the Average Infringement Suit..from what I've read.) SO..UNLESS someone steals a BIG Hit from ya..AND makes a PILE of loot from it (Pretty rare these days) it's not VERY Worth-the-Filing...Unless you're REAL SURE "This Is IT!!!"

Oh..and IF you're working with an Indie Artist...(as I have in the past) THEY, TOO..can file for the SR (C)...and Voila..HIS "Collection" costs just ONE Filing Fee..& You Are Covered, Bigtime..IF He/She is The CO-Writer.

All Gleaned from The School of Hard Knocks, & yep, IANAL...but even THOSE Guys can't agree 'til a Judge Sorts It All Out!!!

Good Luck/Pen some Good, WORTH-Copyrighting Stuff...& then Your Publisher gets stuck with the Bills!

Best Wishes/Big Hugs,
Stan

Another Lawyer (not Stu):

"I will add the following: copyright infringement suits are filed in federal court. The jurisdictional threshold is $75,000. In other words, you must claim 75K worth of damages to even get into court. It is the rare library track that generates that kind of $$$. So…before you even get to the “long, expensive legal mess,” you need a lot of damages."

If this is true, there is absolutely no point in registering a copyright (for music library composers) since it's inconceivable to earn 75K on one track in a music library.

John

Very important discussion, and I still have doubts
about dealing with copyright,
real example:
I am Ukraine based and co-wrote a song with lyricist from UK and singer from US recorded it
( I sent that song in mp3 forum,it's title is Living By The Sea).
By the way, singer has a right for sound recording and if we with lyricist want to use that song with her performance commercially then we should get her permission.
I know it exactly: there is even so-called "release form" that you should sign with every musician and singer who made your demo if you want to use a demo commercially.
Now there are a lot of international co-writes among hit songs too.
So, under what law we are in my case:
US, UK or Ukraine?