A Question Of Copyright •
The Most Important Question Of All?

Although cases of complete song theft are very rare,
it is best to be prepared for the worst!

These notes will help you protect yourself

I suppose, basically, there is a feeling that somewhere, there is (or ought to be) an international body which will protect your copyright and pursue anybody who infringes on it - a sort of copyright police force as it were.

Unfortunately, there is not.

You as a songwriter, are responsible for protecting your own work, unless you have assigned your song to a music publisher to exploit it on your behalf - whereupon the publisher should take on the responsibility of pursuing infringers on your behalf, (which, given the cost of initiating and pursuing legal actions, might be just as well!).

As a result of there not being any statutory body willing to pursue wrongdoers on your behalf, various services have grown up which offer simply to register your work, leaving you to pursue the offenders.

However, the legal situation under Common Law, is that once you sit down and write the song, you own it.

In other words, in order to own it, you do not need to register it with anybody, post it to yourself, give it to your local clergyman - or whatever.

From the moment it goes down on paper, you are the its legal owner.

Let's put it on a more mundane plane.

Suppose you got your trusty hammer and a few nails and created a table, you would not expect that in order to "own" it - you would have to register it with somebody.

Well it is no different in the case of a song.

You wrote it - you own it.

Of course being the owner, and proving you are the owner, are not the same thing!

If an envious neighbour broke in some night and stole your table and then claimed he had made it - could you prove you were the creator?

And it is exactly the same with your song.

Proving that you are its owner in the first place, may be a different matter, and at some stage, if there is a dispute over ownership, you may be called upon to provide proof of ownership.

Producing your mother before the judge to say she saw you write the song, may (or may not), be quite as good as producing the Archbishop of Canterbury to say that one week after you wrote it, you lodged a copy with him for safe keeping.

In other words, at the end of the day, it is a matter of how credible your witness (or your chosen method of proving ownership) is.

In the UK, two major Copyright Acts, in 1911 and 1956, (and the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988) form the basis on which most of a songwriter's rights rest, although the concept of copyright law goes back to the Statute of Anne (1709).

By a number of international decisions, notably the Berne Convention and the Universal Copyright Convention, your song is protected to a greater or lesser extent in almost every other country of the world.

Most countries also passed their own national Copyright Acts during the last century, and there would have been subsequent amendments which updated the law to cover use of music on records, on radio, on TV, in films etc.

But, the main point I am making is that in the UK, you are not obliged to "officially" copyright your song,
because as soon as you have written it down or made a recording of it (whether amateur or professional),
then copyright exists from that moment on.

This situation is much the same in most countries, although in the USA, the practice has long been to "register" your song in the Federal Copyright Office in Washington, on payment of a fee.

[However, although this is indeed a government-run organisation, it does not offer to pursue any infringer on your behalf - it simply offers to register your copyright. You will still have to do your own pursuing!].

In the UK, even if you place your song with a publisher, you remain the first owner of the copyright, and in some continental countries you always remain the owner and in effect only grant a license to the publisher to do such things for you as print the song, place it with a record label, collect the royalties, etc.

Of course, you may not always be the first owner of a copyright if you were employed by someone else to create it. For example, an advertising executive penning a jingle, be its creator, but if he was paid to write it, the agency, and not the writer, may actually own the copyright.

In the UK, copyright lasts for the whole of your lifetime and for seventy years after that. If two songwriters write the song together, then copyright continues for seventy years after the death of whoever dies last.

For example. most people think that "Happy Birthday To You", must be out of copyright since it has been around for so long (since 1893 actually), but it is still in copyright, due to the longevity of its writers, and although nobody is going to sue you if you sing it at your kid's birthday party without paying a royalty, royalties are due, and will be collected by the publisher, AOL Time-Warner, if somebody records it, includes it in a film, or reproduces the words in a book or magazine. The song still earns $2,000,000 per year.

Although you can copyright a complete song, or just the words, (or indeed just the melody), copyright only protects the work itself - and not necessarily the idea behind the work.

[Having said that, a songwriter just recently brought an action in the USA, claiming that his suggestions "inspired" another writer's song, although he is not claiming to have written one word or note of the actual song itself. However, that case which is pending in Nashville, has yet to be decided upon].

Notwithstanding all of the above, in our experience, most copyright disputes do not arise from the
alleged theft of an entire unpublished song. That is most unusual.

Most legal actions arise instead, from the alleged theft of some lines or some snatches of melody from another published song.

Anyway - how can you do something to protect your work?

In the UK, songwriters usually choose to effect copyright protection by any method which gives them a dated receipt for their material - preferably, though not necessarily, from a source independent of the writer.

Accordingly, you can effect a type of copyright protection by depositing your song with anybody, and obtaining from them a dated receipt.

If you are going down this route, I would recommend a bank or a solicitor simply because banks rarely expire, and although solicitors are not eternal, their legal practices are generally sold on to another lawyer, so it should be possible to dig up the proof and produce somebody to verify that proof, many years hence, should a dispute arise.

This usually costs money!

Other songwriters prefer to post the material to themselves in an official Post Office registered envelope, keeping the envelope unopened in a safe place, along with the registration certificate, until needed.

[Some of the commercial copyright services suggest it this method - which they some times refer to as the "poor man's copyright!" is not secure, on the grounds that if you post it to yourself, the other claiman could claim that you subsequently tampered with the envelope and changed the contents, but there are such things as tamper-proof envelopes, so that argument may or may not be valid].

However, there is a basic flaw which has yet to be exploited in court - namely that some Post Offices will accept unsealed envelopes for registration, which may negate the whole process anyway.

In other words, whereas it will be possible to prove the item was sent, and the item was delivered, it may be impossible to prove that the item sent, was in fact sealed before being posted.

In any event, if you decide to go down this route. you may end up with a large number of these envelopes, so from sad experience, can I say that it is a good idea to write the name of the song on the rear of each envelope!

Lyrics can be posted on their own, or (if a melody is also to be protected), a rough tape or manuscript, can be enclosed in the envelope, and normally, the letter "C" in a circle, followed by the year, is written on any copy.

In America, it has long been the practice, but not a legal requirement, for songwriters to register their songs through the Register of Copyrights, Library Of Congress, Washington DC20599, USA. This organisation will send you a Form PA. There is a fee (currently $30) for each song copyrighted in this manner.

The Library Of Congress Copyright Office is on the web at

http://lcweb.loc.gov/copyright/

and you can download forms from that site, or you can write to

U.S. Copyright Office 101 Independence Ave. S.E.
Washington, D.C. 20559-6000, USA

[Although the Copyright Office provides a long-standing method of registration - it is simply that and nothing else. Do not expect them to call in the FBI if somebody steals your song - but the fact that a government organisation is running it, should mean it will not go out of business in the very mear future!]

ISA • The Copyright Service

The International Songwriters Association operates a free Copyright Service on behalf of its members.

Simply click HERE to copyright your material free of charge.

The ISA • Looking For A Hit Songwriter?

Singers, bands, and managers seeking hit songs, contact us daily.

If you are looking for unpublished songwriting product, our songwriters will happily oblige.  Just click the pic!

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ISA Website  http://www.songwriter.co.uk • Editorial E-Mail  jliddane@songwriter.iol.ie

International Songwriters Association Limited
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