TAE
All you have is now
So over the years we have had some back n forth discussions on the need to register your songs with the U.S. copyright office to protect them...
The moment you create a copyrightable work that work is protected by copyright laws. The caveat being that in order to sue someone in the United States for copyright infringement you must register that work with the U.S. copyright office. Though I agree the old poor mans copyright was a weak way to protect, I have held the stance that in this digital cyber age the moment I have e-mailed that work to various people or posted that work online be it Facebook, Soundcloud, Soundclick , Itunes HR.com etc....I have created a digital time stamp that can be used as legal evidence and proof of the date of creation and can obtain a copyright for my work with that evidence....and then sue the rat bastard that stole my work and made a gazillion dollars with it ...See that's the rub...The only reason to have a U.S. issued Copyright is if you are going to sue somebody for stealing / using your work...I don't want to burst any bubbles here but the likelihood of 99.9% of us poor slobs having a work worth going to court over is nil. So as incredible of a songwriter, singer and musician as I am, I have never copyrighted any of my work...but I have posted it out on the net and shared it in multiple places that are digital proof that the work is mine and existed since X date...so if by chance I am so lucky as to win the incredible singer, songwriter and musician lottery and have one of my works "borrowed" and that person starts making some serious money from it....at that time I will give notice to the offender to cease and desist and register my work with the copyright office to go after said offender if they are making REAL $ with my work...
That's me and that's my strategy..
I subscribe to several recording tutorial, business tutorial e-mail chains and some of you may have heard of Silverscreenmusic.com Matt has his schtick to try and lure you into working with him to get your music in TV and movies..
His latest little business is Songsecure.com where he explains a lot of what I already mentioned above but leads one to believe his digital documentation is "special" and uses a patent attorney in the video below to explain why his new little business is a smart way to register your songs...
I call bullshit that I need his service and that by e-mailing a work via gmail to myself or anyone else I have admissible evidence and solid proof of the existence of my work and the date it was e-mailed. That conclusion is based upon Section 65B – Admissibility of Electronic Records
Sec. 65B(1): Notwithstanding anything contained in this Act, any information contained in an electronic record –
which is printed on a paper, stored, recorded or copied in optical or magnetic media produced by a computer
shall be deemed to be also a document, if the conditions mentioned in this section are satisfied in relation to the information and
computer in question and shall be admissible in any proceedings, without further proof or production of the original,
as evidence of any contents of the original or of any fact stated therein of which direct evidence would be admissible.
So for me I ain't copyrighting nothing and I'm not paying songsecure a dime cause I don't need em...
Here's the Song Secure Lawyer giving his pitch as to why the service works...which IMO bolsters my stance that we don't need to get a U.S. Copyright ....until we do...and it's never too late to get one if you have solid proof of the date of creation....
[video]https://songsecure.com/copyright/legal-information/[/video]
The moment you create a copyrightable work that work is protected by copyright laws. The caveat being that in order to sue someone in the United States for copyright infringement you must register that work with the U.S. copyright office. Though I agree the old poor mans copyright was a weak way to protect, I have held the stance that in this digital cyber age the moment I have e-mailed that work to various people or posted that work online be it Facebook, Soundcloud, Soundclick , Itunes HR.com etc....I have created a digital time stamp that can be used as legal evidence and proof of the date of creation and can obtain a copyright for my work with that evidence....and then sue the rat bastard that stole my work and made a gazillion dollars with it ...See that's the rub...The only reason to have a U.S. issued Copyright is if you are going to sue somebody for stealing / using your work...I don't want to burst any bubbles here but the likelihood of 99.9% of us poor slobs having a work worth going to court over is nil. So as incredible of a songwriter, singer and musician as I am, I have never copyrighted any of my work...but I have posted it out on the net and shared it in multiple places that are digital proof that the work is mine and existed since X date...so if by chance I am so lucky as to win the incredible singer, songwriter and musician lottery and have one of my works "borrowed" and that person starts making some serious money from it....at that time I will give notice to the offender to cease and desist and register my work with the copyright office to go after said offender if they are making REAL $ with my work...
That's me and that's my strategy..
I subscribe to several recording tutorial, business tutorial e-mail chains and some of you may have heard of Silverscreenmusic.com Matt has his schtick to try and lure you into working with him to get your music in TV and movies..
His latest little business is Songsecure.com where he explains a lot of what I already mentioned above but leads one to believe his digital documentation is "special" and uses a patent attorney in the video below to explain why his new little business is a smart way to register your songs...
I call bullshit that I need his service and that by e-mailing a work via gmail to myself or anyone else I have admissible evidence and solid proof of the existence of my work and the date it was e-mailed. That conclusion is based upon Section 65B – Admissibility of Electronic Records
Sec. 65B(1): Notwithstanding anything contained in this Act, any information contained in an electronic record –
which is printed on a paper, stored, recorded or copied in optical or magnetic media produced by a computer
shall be deemed to be also a document, if the conditions mentioned in this section are satisfied in relation to the information and
computer in question and shall be admissible in any proceedings, without further proof or production of the original,
as evidence of any contents of the original or of any fact stated therein of which direct evidence would be admissible.
So for me I ain't copyrighting nothing and I'm not paying songsecure a dime cause I don't need em...
Here's the Song Secure Lawyer giving his pitch as to why the service works...which IMO bolsters my stance that we don't need to get a U.S. Copyright ....until we do...and it's never too late to get one if you have solid proof of the date of creation....
[video]https://songsecure.com/copyright/legal-information/[/video]
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