Re: Legality of Putting One's Songs on the Web

My opinion...nothing beats a *legal* copyright, if you ever need to
defend your claim, in court. Period. The various methods people will
suggest...such as mailing it to yourself, etc., will NOT stand up in
court.

As someone else suggested, compile your songs into one collection and
then apply for copyright as "collective works." That will save money and
offer the same level of protection for your music.

There are also different types of copyright.

File Form SR if you wish to copyright the actual recording. This would
be useful to copyright your CD--the recording, only. (While this method
does provide some level of protection for the individual songs, that's
not it's true intended purpose.) Naturally, any CD released for sale,
etc., should have this protection!

File Form PA if you wish to copyright the *songs.*

Also, I believe the current fee is $45, and not $65.

I guess it's really a judgment call. If you don't plan to do much with
your songs, then you may not need to register a copyright. It's true
that--once you write a song and record it in some way, you already have a
basic copyright. But, if you plan to post them to the web or make them
available for sale, distribution, etc., then I would certainly suggest
doing it the right way! There are some real scumbags out there and you
just never know what might happen. If you value your work, then do it
right and register your music. As far as I know, the only *sure* way to
defend your copyright, is to register your works properly.

I'm not a lawyer, but my band just went through all this. Based on what
we learned, I really think a legal copyright is worth $45 and the way to
go.

My opinion anyway--

There is a lot of information on the Library of Congress website,
including a FAQ. Many of your questions may be answered there.

Good Luck,

Mike

cineman74@xxxxxxxxx wrote:

Hi all,
Was just looking into how to put up some small tunes I wrote and am
recording onto MySpace or onto my own site. At $65 a pop, the U.S.
Copyright office is pretty expensive as far as copyrighting media
creations go, but if you have some stuff and you want to throw it up
on say your own website or a MySpace page, what are your legal rights
as far as protecting the material?

Now, a couple of singer/songwriters I know who use both their own
sites and MySpace say that they simply put the stuff up and that once
it's recorded, a song already has some sort of inherent legal binding
to you.

That last point sounded somewhat vague to me, so I thought someone
could elaborate, or simply offer up a cheap solution that doesn't
break the bank and keeps my music... well, my own. :)

Thanks everybody. Happy holidays.

.

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