Copywrite question

[ChrisEmond]

Hi everyone,
I'm new to this forum and a quick search did not turn up the answers I'm looking for.

As I get better at creating what the listings are looking for, I expect more forwards which may or may not be retained. I live in Canada and the processes of copyrighting is costly and time consuming. This being said, I'm curious as to how the successful people on this forum deal with this issue.

At what stage do you consider that copyrighting your song, cue etc. to be warranted if not down right a must!?

Thanks,

Chris

[Kolstad]

You basically need to distinguish between copyright protection and copyright registration.

You already have copyright protection as soon as your work is done.
You can choose to register your copyright in order to add documentation to your copyright, which might help you in infringement cases. Say with the US Copyright Office. Some does bulk registrations, which might reduce the cost.

Registration can be costly for cues, say if you produce 10+ a week, and might not be worth it. as you already are protected. They don't generate much money either, so the risk of loosing an infringement case might not be worth the risk.

In Denmark where I'm located, courts has accepted poor man's copyright as evidence in infringement cases. It might not be valid in the US, but I have set up an emailaddress with an independent email provider (Hotmail, Gmail ect. will do) that I only use for this. Once I have created the cue, I send an email to myself with the file. The idea with this is that this email gets a time stamp at the server, which I cannot manipulate. Therefore courts accept this as additional valid documentation.

You can also set up an RSS feed with your site, which also can add to the documentation pile, which infringement cases is all about.

And you can have archive.org crawl your website, and thus provide you with an independent time stamp, which can add to document your protected copyright (without ever having it registrated). There's a small field on the site in the lower right corner where you can ask the site to visit your site http://archive.org/web/

But Denmark is not the US, so while these tips should suffice as documentation anywhere, I don't know if they will hold up in a US court. However, it has been documented that these methods will hold up as valid evidence here.

[ChrisEmond]

Hi Kolstad,

Taxi is indeed a wonderful place to get input from members all around the world.

I appreciate your input and as you pointed out, the predicament that I was apprehending was registering multiple cues as they can be whipped out pretty fast by someone who becomes skilled in their genre.

Thanks for your opinion on this and I wish you great success in your musical endeavors.

Chris

p.s. what are your musical interests?

[Kolstad]

Thanks, Chris,

As far as I know, many doesn't register their cue copyrights. The fees are big, the income relatively small, the music is often pretty generic and time is short. So, all of those things speak against it. Of course it's not an advice not to do it, more an open reflection on where to spend efforts most effectively.

My musical intrests are pretty diverse. I do write music for film/tv, as well as songs for self release, as well as songs for other artists. Genres are classic/indie rock, blues, jazz, urban, singer/songwriter. But mostly blues based guitar driven stuff. About 80% instrumental music at the moment.

[ChrisEmond]

That's what I suspected. I can't imagine how time consuming and expensive it would get for prolific writers who are used to pumping out hundreds of songs/cues every year.

[coachdebra]

Some great answers - and when doing a search, you should make sure you're spelling your keyword correctly - it's copyright not copywrite (as in your rights as a writer vs. your ability to write...)

There are tons of discussions in the archives on copyrights - so, hopefully you got your answers here - and you may still want to do your search again

[ChrisEmond]

Wow, you're right. I did get a lot more "right" search results with the correct spelling

Thanks Debra. A little misspelling can turn out well sometimes since it allowed me to discover you and Kolstad.

[coachdebra]

Google will often correct your spelling for you - but most other search functions won't