Does publicly posting one's original lyrics here, credited to oneself, in anyway constitute a copyright, or something close to it?
Just wonderin'.
Your pal,
NF
Does publicly posting one's original lyrics here, credited to oneself, in anyway constitute a copyright, or something close to it?
Just wonderin'.
Your pal,
NF
"Well, I used to be disgusted, now I try to be amused..."
Elvis Costello
Er.... nope.
Copyright is granted to the author automatically at the moment of creation. However, if you feel that you might someday want to take someone to court over a copyright, there is only one gateway: you must have filed the work with the Library of Congress in order to bring suit under US copyright law.
And that's the whole dang story. No "song vaults," self-addressed registered letters or other forms of "poor man's copyright" will do. Because in the US, you can't even file suit unless the work is registered with the LOC.
Yer bud,
GJ
Jim nails it.
It could mean that it's "published" though...
So, in a sense, it's copyrighted as soon as I'm done with it?
But, should something happen, that has no legal weight unless it's registered. Is that the case?
Is there maybe a more accurate term for what I'm asking about?
The reason I ask is that, I've posted a handful of classified ads online, here and on another forum, and the vast majority of the responses I've gotten are from people I've never heard of.
I'm just a bit leary of dangling my original stuff out there without a fairly clear idea of any implications. :ahem
"Well, I used to be disgusted, now I try to be amused..."
Elvis Costello
It IS copyrighted the moment you're done with it. But if you are going to expose work that you feel you might need to defend one day, then you want to register your copyright with the LOC.
I've never posted a lyic that I don't have on file, except one I wrote to impress Annie D. at That Other Place. (She tossed out a title, I wrote a lyric to go with it... but, I don't have a melody or a demo or anything for that song, and if it got ripped, I'd be mighty surpised.)
But if you DO have it on file with the LOC, and someone else grabs it from an oon-line source (like TFF) and you feel like using, you should have an iron-clad way of proving they had access to the original (one of the main points in winning a copyright infringement case). You might even be able to prove that their IP address accessed the very thread containing the lyric (although I don't know how long those records get saved by hosting services).
:yayT'anks.
"Well, I used to be disgusted, now I try to be amused..."
Elvis Costello
Welp, I've been terribly misinformed, which explains some things.
Thought if you taped sumpin' and mailed it to yourself you were in high water.
The two good tunes I wrote are copywritten with ASCAP.
Course nobody wants to do them. Murphy's Law
Hey, Jimbo, you should find AND do that tune.
Four Da Funnait
Shine your light.
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote