08/21/091 Copyright Basics Or What's With All the Legal Stuff??? Tour Smart PLUS Chicago, Illinois July 24, 2010

08/21/092 What do you REALLY need to know about Copyright? 1.It is possible that your copyrights will be your retirement plan. It is possible that your grand children will still be collecting royalties. Don't “share” credit just to be nice. You will hate yourself, and your ex-band mates for a very long time if you do.

08/21/ A registered copyright does not prevent people from infringing on your rights. It does give you support in a course of legal action.

08/21/ It is not worth suing someone who has nothing, unless you need to in order to preserve your rights. That is why many cases of infringement are not prosecuted. It does not mean that sampling, downloading, and YouTube videos are necessarily legal. It just means that there is no legal or financial advantage to suing.

08/21/ There is no “legal” way to infringe on someone else. Only using 5 notes, changing the key, or changing the lyrics are all ways to infringe, not ways to get around a copyright.

08/21/096 How do I protect my songs? It is easy to protect your songs. Once you have put your creative work in a “fixed, tangible medium of expression”, your work is covered by copyright law. But, you still need to REGISTER that copyright with the Library of Congress. You do that online at Registering within three months of publication also provides you some additional protections, like statutory damages if you win an infringement suit, as well as recovery of attorney fees. In order to file an infringement suit, your work must be registered.

08/21/097 6 Exclusive Rights Owning (and registering) a copyright grants you 6 exclusive rights in regards to that work  reproduction  creation of derivative works (ie – use a piece of the work like in a sample)  distribution by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease or lending  public performance  public display  and, in the case of sound recordings, the right to public performance by means of a digital audio transmission

08/21/098 And What Do You Register? Song refers to the lyrics and melody independent of any specific performance. It's copyright is referred to as the circle c,© or PA (performing arts) copyright. Recording to the specific version of the song that has been recorded and it's copyright is referred to as the, circle p, (P), or SR (sound recording). Traditionally, the party that pays for the recording (ie – the record label) is the one that owns the SR. You can also register your logo and album graphics with a VA (visual arts) copyright.

08/21/099 You can register more than one song at a time. As long as all authors are the same, and all songs are released together, you can save yourself some money and register a collection. Big corporations do it all the time, why shouldn't you? Just make sure you list each song title to make searching your material as easy as possible. You should register the SR and the PA. While you can just register the SR, and have an implied PA, this can complicate licensing opportunities. Do yourself a favor, spend the extra money, and make it easy for someone else to pay you to use your work.

08/21/0910 What About Creative Commons? ( “Some rights reserved”. Creative commons licenses are designed to work within current copyright law. In essence, the copyright owner “waives” certain rights. For example, a copyright owner might use a Creative Commons license to allow their song to be legally shared online.

08/21/0911 More Info