I am not a lawyer, but I play one on a guitar. (okay, it was lame, but not bad for no thought put into it...
)
Not entirely true Bliss about "whoever sends it off first".
Buck62 is right on the money here about copyrights. You would need a lot of people purjuring themselves under oath to get a judge to believe that you are entitled to the rights of the tune. Basically, all these purjurs would be saying that your wrote it and not the artist who actually did. It is WHO wrote the tune that counts, not who tried to claim it first with a copyright. Anyone can send in a copyright for anything, but it is a matter of whether it will hold up under scrutiny that is the issue here. This has been a precendent for a long time now and I can remember reading stuff about this long ago when I was submitting music to labels.
If you want to talk publishing rights, you may have a little case here, but even then, you need the copyright holder to sign over the rights to publish the music.
mwande23. Save yourself a lot of legal headache's and fines (when those artist's sue you, you will be paying their legal fee's too...
) Get their permission.
I produce "techinically" uncopyrighted music all the time. Me producing it does not mean squat unless I have something in writing saying they are making me a co-writer of the music because I produced it. I would consider a deal like this if I was reasonably sure that the band's recording was going to make money, or at least the songs would. But most of the time I am just happy to get a fee for producing.
If the band owes you money for the recordings, about your only recourse in getting that money back would be to sell any properties you have in your possesion that is theirs, but, you would need a contract stating that you have a time limit on how long you will wait for payment before selling. Also, you would need to give the artist a fair warning in writing that you intend to sell the tapes if they don't pay. This can include the original tapes, but, the artist retains all the "intellectual rights" (that is basically what a copyright is) to the song. So, you can sell the tapes, but not the music on them. So, hopefully the band doesn't owe you too much money because used tape doesn't sell for much these days....
Being the engineer means nothing. Once again, if they owe you money, you could sell the tapes, but that is all. If you choose to record them for free, well, a judge would probably think you are a swell guy for doing so, but is not going to give you rights to the songs just for that reason even though the artist didn't "formalize" the copyright.
You may be getting this all confused because of all the stories about the early "ethnic" artist's that were being screwed by record lables out of their copyrights. But, that was then and this is now. The court's will in almost every case judge for the artist in copyright cases.
Good luck.
Ed
[This message has been edited by sonusman (edited 04-03-2000).]