Copyright Question

[Dalia]

I have a question about copyright - in particular, copyrighting songs using my stage name or my real name. I perform using a stage name and am releasing a CD soon with that name. Should I copyright those songs using my stage name or my real name? I wish to keep my real name private and the copyright information is online. However, if I copyright the songs with my stage name and there is an infringement issue with the songs, how do I prove that I am the author of the songs? Thank you for your advice.

[RPaul]

With the standard caveat (i.e. this is not legal advice), when you register the copyright, there is a place in the author section of the form for whether you are using a pseudonym or not. That would be where you'd put your stage name. I believe your full legal name should be used for the claimant field, though. There is also a place for public contact information, where you can put whatever information you are okay with being public. For example, I just use a name and an email address on my website in that area. No physical address. (I think I may also use my "home" phone number, but that is a MagicJack number that goes directly to voice mail, so any contacts through that will come to my another email that is not published.) Beware, too, that the term of copyright is somewhat more limited for a pseudonymous work than for other cases. See https://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl101.pdf for more info.

Rick