By Colin Lazzerini

What It means to You

1. How You Qualify For Copyright

There are two requirements:

1. your work has to be original
2. it must exist in a “tangible" form
/list]

You can't simply have an idea, however original, that lives only in your head. It has to be "fixed" in some concrete media or other. If you write out your lyrics on paper, or publish them on Songstuff pages, they are in tangible form. If you record your song, or transcribe a lead-sheet, or sketch out words and chords, then it is in tangible form.

The moment a creative work is in such tangible form, copyright under the Berne Convention is automatic: no registration is required, nor is the inclusion of a copyright notice.

Special Warnings:

The Berne Convention eliminates the requirement for a formal copyright notice alright, but it's still a good idea to have one. That way, should anyone ever stoop to ripping you off, they can't claim "innocent infringement" as a defence.

Similarly, formal registration may no longer be essential, but it's certainly recommended you join the relevant association for the neighbourhood and log your works with them.

These performance rights organizations are essential for our protection and survival.

But first...

2. What You Get With Copyright

1. You or your estate and inheritors own the song for 70 years after your death.
2. Ownership means you have “exclusive rights":
   1. to make and sell copies of the song
   2. to import or export them
   3. to rent or lend them
   4. to make adaptations
   5. to perform it in public
   6. to have it broadcast
   7. to sell or assign these rights to others
3. You have “moral rights":
   1. to be recognised and credited as author/writer of the song
   2. to claim protection for your artistic integrity

Within these largely agreed principles, the individual states that have signed up to them will all have their own bodies of law governing infringements or breaches of your copyright, and how you get compensated.

There will also be different national conventions and standards for writing industry contracts.

3. Performing Right Organisations

Any use of your song - the rights to sell, rent, broadcast or perform it - will generate a royalty. But as an individual songwriter you certainly won't have time or resources to track down all these users and get paid your due. That's why performing rights organisations are there to do it for you.

They collect money from radio stations, TV stations, programming companies, internet companies and any other broadcasting user of music. They collect from places that have performances of live music. They collect from people who make recordings. They collect from restaurants and bars and other public places where these recordings are played.

They then re-distribute these royalties on behalf of their author and publisher memberships.

If your songs are being performed in public or threaten to get recorded or broadcast, you should join the organisation where you live.

No messing.

4. Trading Your Rights

Controlling and trading and exploiting your rights as a copyright owner is how you earn a living as a songwriter or composer.

Of the two sets of rights - economic and moral - economic rights can be sold or licenced, but not the moral rights.

When writers sign a publishing deal, they assign the economic rights to their songs over to the publishing company in exchange for royalties according to the terms of a contract.

Moral rights cannot change hands, though.

Like biological parenthood, authorship is a simple fact that can never be changed. No problem with that for anyone in the game. But publishers want to be free to put your song forward for pretty much any use where they can turn a dollar. And they won't wish to be unnecessarily restrained from exploiting any money-making opportunity. So the other bit of moral rights - the right to be able to protect your reputation and the integrity of your work - is what remains a very contentious area.

Most will expect you to waive your moral rights.



Next Page >>