Never Use The "Poor Man's Copyright" To Protect Your Music. Everyone in the music industry at some point has heard of the "poor man's copyright" technique. Let’s go through the concept for those of you who are not sure how it’s supposed to work. Before we do, let’s be clear here, the "Poor Man's Copyright" DOESN'T WORK!  

NO COURT HAS EVER ACCEPTED THIS METHOD AS LEGAL PROOF OF COPYRIGHT, So don't bother wasting your time! But here's what it's supposed to do (and why it doesn't work). The poor man's copyright (not copywrite) is when you send a CD, or sheet music, or some other physical form of your music, to yourself (or a friend) by recorded mail.  

The idea when you think about it sounds reasonable: A few days later, when you get your songs or music back in the post, you leave the envelope UNOPENED. You just hide it away somewhere, in a drawer, a safety deposit box, with your savings, and just wait until someday when someone tries to steal your song or music.  

You then retrieve...

Copyright is a legal fiction designed to protect the works of artists, inventors and innovators. In essence, it is a legal bar, allowing exclusivity for those who create works in the form of an intangible asset which can be sold or relinquished, and which expires upon a certain period of time. With the growth of the internet, and the creation of more and more content, the question of copyright is becoming increasingly more relevant, and one which more and more webmasters are considering to protect their own interests. Additionally, with the rise of the freelancer market, the issue of copyright is becoming a heated topic of debate for both buyers and sellers at every stage in the production chain, and the effects of not having the relevant rights could be potentially catastrophic. In this article, we'll look at what exactly copyright is, and how it relates to the internet in content creation.

 

Copyright is an artificial concept that gives the creator of a work, or the person he sells the right...

The Legal Rights Of Musicians Creative people of all types all come back to one legal touchstone and that is copyright law.  It is often sited in all kinds of cases involving literature, film, publishing and certainly in music.  Within the music industry, the ability of copyright to protect an artist's work has come under new challenges in the last ten years.  The rise of peer-to-peer file sharing, online music downloading and other internet related ways that music gets passed around has presented some real challenges to musicians to collect what is due them as owners of music under copyright. There are numerous royalty rights associated with the writing, publication, performance and distribution of music that have to be sorted out by a complicated infrastructure that the music industry maintains to protect its own.  But when you get back to the basics, the copyright of a piece of music works in music the same way it does in any literary field.  That copyright, at least at first, belongs to the songwriter. ...

Stamping Your Cd With Copy Protection No matter what type of original content you are producing, you want to make sure that you place your customized stamp on it.  From music to audio books, copy protection is one of the best things that you can do while getting into the CD duplication process.  This will prevent a variety of problems from occurring in the future when you have your CD selling as a product.  Copy protection began as an option for copyrighting.  With the growth of technology, it became easier for individuals to burn CDs from others and to download music for free online.  Beyond this, individuals were able to take music, media and other parts of CDs and copy them as their own.  This combination of problems led to the industry building a way to restrict the copies being made and to stop consumers from burning and downloading CDs or music.  You can Copyright your songs at http://www.creativerights.com  ...

Calling all Music Producers, Have you Copyrighted your songs yet, if not, why? You've spent many hours composing a song, honing the lyrics and polishing the melody; now, how do you copyright it? Head over to http://www.creativerights.com and Copyright your song     As soon as you finish creating a song and written the lyrics down on paper, you own the copyright by simple virtue of the fact that you wrote it. In other words, you don't have to register a song with any copyright office in order to own the copyright to that song. HOWEVER, (and this is a big 'however'), if you ever have to prove that you wrote the song first, you'll probably need something more than your lyrics scribbled down on a beer mat; even if you have written your name, the copyright symbol, and the year on it. It's all about proof. The problem is proving you thought of it first...

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