Entertainment and Music Law Resource Center Mirror Site
Why Register Your Copyrights?
Introduction
Let us say, by way of example, that you are in your garage one fine sunny day – when it comes to you – the lyrics and music to the finest song ever written. You have spent a year cooped up in your home studio trying to write this awesome song. "Ah", you say to yourself-" I’ll copyright it and I’ll be rich!!!" So you carefully make an 8-track recording of your hit song. You play it around town for a few of your closest confidants and everyone says it is the greatest song ever written and recorded. They also add, "Man you really should copyright that stuff." So, rather than consult an attorney –because you have no money after spending a year holed up in your studio writing the darned thing –you hear of the "poor man’s copyright" after reading it in a magazine that caters to musicians.
The "poor man’s copyright" is simply sealing a copy of your tape in a mailer and sending the sealed envelope to yourself so that you will have the post mark as evidence of the date when you first created the work. You get your tape back in its mailer and you let it sit –still sealed in the mailer. And you are content, confident that you hold the copyright in the greatest song ever written and recorded.
You start shopping your song to everyone who will listen to it. A week later, however, you walk into your favorite CD store and you hear it –you know that tune but who in the hells voice is that on your song. In fact it is your song and the only difference is that the voice has been re-recorded. It is a note for note copy of your original tape only your voice is missing! "I’ll sue the bastard", you exclaim! And you think about how much money you will collect because you have a copy of your tape in a mailer in your sock drawer with the date clearly legible (a first in history for the Post Office) in the cancelled stamp.
So that very minute –you drop everything – and you race home to get your precious little envelope. Grabbing it you head for your local attorney –the same one who has defended you on 3 prior felonies. Knowing nothing about copyright he directs you to a friend of his whom is a copyright attorney. That attorney, knowing that you can’t pay your fee, listens patiently as you spit out your story of how you have been robbed. All the while you are tightly clutching the little brown mailer with your prize tape inside. As you finish your story, smelling righteous victory, she calmly tells you that she won’t take your case.
WHY @@#$% NOT? You have a @#@$!@!! COPYRIGHT don’t you?
Yes. You are the copyright owner of the composition and the owner of the copyright in the sound recording. You had these even before you mailed your tape back to yourself.
SO WHAT IS THE !!@#!#$!!! PROBLEM, THEN?
Under the 1976 Copyright Act, Copyright protection begins whenever the work is "fixed in any tangible medium of expression." 17 USCA § 102. For sound recordings the Act states:
Phonorecords are material objects in which sounds, other than those accompanying a motion picture or other audiovisual work, are fixed by any method now known or later developed, and from which the sounds can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated . . . The term "phonorecords" includes the material object in which the sounds are first fixed. 17 USCA § 101.
So your copyright protection began when you recorded the song on tape. The act of recording the song constitutes "fixation" for the purpose of copyright law. The reason that copyright protection is so easy to obtain is because the protection only applies to copying of the work. That is, one person may not copy another persons work. If two individuals independently create the same work –even if it is identical in every aspect –a coincidence of the highest order – there is no case to be made for copyright infringement because there has been no copying. It should be noted that Copyright protection only applies to "original works of authorship" –with the standard for originality extremely low.
Assuming the requirements for copyrightability are met here (these will be discussed in another article), the real question is:
