Copyrighting downloadable music?

M

Monkey

Cabin boy
I know how to copyright an album--fill out the form and send it to the Copyright office. However I'm putting up a website and I'd like to let people download new songs that I post on the web. I'm not going to pay to copyright each song before it hits the net, but I don't want to get them stolen either.

I know that newspapers and such publications have some kind of copyright that is automatic with each publication and wonder if I can do something like that--though I guess for them, it's a matter of "we can prove you stole this material because there are 1,000,000 copies of our paper that show we wrote it first."

Anyway, got any ideas on this? Has the law even caught up to online copyright yet?
 
copyright for music is the same no matter what medium you present it on (tape, CD, website)....your copyright is immediate upon creation of the music, however, registration with the copyright office is ultimately the way to prove it, and definitely the only way you can sue for damages.....

just put all of the songs on one tape or CD and register it as a collection and youll pay the one price.......if you are worried about each new song as you post them to the site you may be being a little overly cautious......the odds of being ripped off are very slim.....and if the songs are THAT good, then would you agree they are worth the price of copyrighting individually?......
 
putting your song up on the web is publishing it. if you want the full copyright registration protection, you'll need to register it as a published work wihtin 3 months. you can send it in on CD.
 
It's not really going to matter... if someone wants to steal your song they are gonna steal it, you could just say it was copywritten to scare off some people, but for the most part if they want it they can get it.

An alternative would be to stream the song, perhaps using swf files, that way they would visit your webpage often and get to hear music
 
The second anything is used in a business manner...ie it is available for purchase...it will hold in a court of law so long as you can prove a date that is was available before the date the other party can prove theirs was available. This goes for logos, artwork, printed material of anykind, and literally anything that needs a trademark, copywrite, phonographic, registered or anything else.


One way for print material would be to make a flyer that has the logo on it, the product artwork and anything else, then go get it noterized at a bank.

Recorded material is a bit more tricky :D......but you could get the lyrics on a sheet of paper and have them noterized. You could even transcribe the music to sheet music if you know how. That is noterizable.
 
and then there's the decision to bother with litigation. that's so expensive it's bankrupted people who try it. Legal fees for a big case are so high, no side wants to do it, even a major label. so if a song is infringing, it has to be making some serious income to justify legal fees, like the George Harrison case.

What am I going to do if some other person copied my song? Be flattered and maybe send a letter, but probably not even that, and, if it's not got big commerical success, I won't even know about it.
 
Hi, I've asked this before and never really got a clear response. Does anyone know if foreigners can copyright stuff with the library of congress, or only US citizens?

(I'm UK based)
 
Another way instead of transcribing an noterizing, is to make a copy of the tunes and mail them to yourself by registered mail. This way the package has a specific dating and also it is registered with Postal system in their records. Just don't open it when you get it other wise you can't prove shit.
 
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