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ISPs Agree to Alert Piraters in New Copyright Enforcement Plan

Last week, a group of major internet service providers (ISPs)—including AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, Cablevision, and Time Warner Cable—all agreed to a new enforcement plan against music and movie piracy. The internet giants signed a voluntary “Memorandum of Understanding” with content owner representatives (including the RIAA and MPAA) to create standard practices of “copyright alerts” directed at users flagged for possible infringement.

Continue reading “ISPs Agree to Alert Piraters in New Copyright Enforcement Plan”

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Copyright 101: Summary of Common Music Licenses

Like any other property, music copyrights and the individual exclusive rights thereof, can be transferred, sold, licensed, and divided among several owners.  In general, to use recorded copyrighted music, you will need permission from both the musical work owner (typically a publisher) and the sound recording owner (typically a record company).  Note, however, if you re-record a song (instead of using a pre-recorded version), permission is only required from the musical work owner (since you are not using someone else’s sound recording). 

Following are descriptions of common music licensing agreements.  In a later post,  I will discuss some of the specific ways in which music is used on the Internet and the types of licenses required.  Continue reading “Copyright 101: Summary of Common Music Licenses”

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Copyright 101: An “Old” Song Is Not Necessarily In The Public Domain

A common misconception is that all “old” songs are not protected by copyright law.  While this is certainly true in some cases, it’s important to understand that determining the length of copyright protection for any particular song is not that simple.  Copyright protection can last for a very long time.  Continue reading “Copyright 101: An “Old” Song Is Not Necessarily In The Public Domain”

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Copyright 101: Creation Of A Copyright

Now that you’ve written and recorded a song, how do you protect it? How do you copyright it?

The good news is that as long as it is your original song and you’ve written it down or recorded it, the song is entitled to copyright protection. Under the Copyright Law, a song is immediately entitled to copyright protection upon the satisfaction of the following criteria:

  1. It must be an “original work[] of authorship”; and
  2. It must be fixed “in any tangible medium of expression, now known or later developed,” such as written sheet music or a CD, MP3, or other recording. Continue reading “Copyright 101: Creation Of A Copyright”
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Copyright 101: Every Recorded Song Has At Least Two Copyrights

It is a common misunderstanding that a song only has one copyright.  For anyone who creates music, uses existing music, or is otherwise involved in the music business, it is important to understand that there are actually at least 2 copyrights involved in every recorded song:  (1) the musical work copyright and (2) the sound recording copyright. Continue reading “Copyright 101: Every Recorded Song Has At Least Two Copyrights”