Copyright

Here here!

Can foreigners register their works in the U.S.?

Any work that is protected by U.S. copyright law can be registered. This includes many works of foreign origin. All works that are unpublished, regardless of the nationality of the author, are protected in the United States. Works that are first published in the United States or in a country with which we have a copyright treaty or that are created by a citizen or domiciliary of a country with which we have a copyright treaty are also protected and may therefore be registered with the U.S. Copyright Office.

It's a shorter list to name the contries that have no copyright treaty with the U.S.A., they are:

     Afghanistan
     Bhutan
     Comoros*
     Ethiopia
     Iran
     Iraq
     Jordan*
     Kiribati*
     Nauru*
     Nepal
     North Korea*
     Oman
     San Marino
     Sudan*
     Somalia*
     Syria*
     Tuvalu*
     Tonga
     Palau*
     Vanuatu*

*US Patent office not sure if there is a treaty or not

Found another good site with info on this

http://www.benedict.com/info/registration/why.asp

Copyright Registration
Why Register?  
     
   
 Registration Although the Copyright Act affords you protection just for creating your work and reducing it to a tangible form, in many cases it is desirable to officially register your works with the U.S. Copyright Office. The registration process is fairly straightforward, the fees are not exorbitant, but be forewarned that the certificate of copyright that you will receive from the Copyright Office is not suitable for framing.

Reasons to Register Copyright protection attaches immediately and automatically upon fixation (reduction to a tangible form) of the work in question. So, why fork over the bucks and go to the trouble of filing a federal copyright registration? There are two fundamental answers:

ability to sue; and
statutory damages.
Although copyright attaches upon fixation, you cannot actually sue someone for infringing your copyright until you have registered your work with the Copyright Office. And if you register your work within three months from the date of first publication, or at least prior to the date of infringement, you can collect statutory damages from the infringer. Otherwise, you are stuck with actual damages, which depending upon the situation, may be only nominal.

Dangers of Non- Registration To see how all of this plays out, assume that this Web page has not been registered. As we know, this page is in tangible form, and is therefore protected by copyright. If someone from The Plagiarism Website comes and copies this page verbatim and places it on that Website, then my copyright has been infringed. In order to sue The Plagiarism Website for copyright infringement, I would have to register this web page with the copyright office. If I was in a hurry to file the lawsuit, I would have to pay an additional $580 fee to expedite the application. Assuming that The Plagiarism Website didn't have any valid defense such as fair use, then I would be able to collect my losses, plus any profits that The Plagiarism Website accrued by virtue of the infringement. But in this case, neither The Copyright Website nor The Plagiarism Website are operated for profit. Consequently, I would end up paying attorneys fees for my trouble.

However, if I had registered this page within three months of its first publication, then I would be able to recover statutory damages in lieu of my virtually non-existent actual damages. Statutory damages can be awarded up to $100,000, plus attorney fees and court costs, depending upon the nature and malevolence of the infringement. As you can see, this would certainly affect your decision making process when deciding whether to sue someone for copyright infringement.

Hey Miserywulf,

Thanks a lot for the information you posted up. It was beneficial for me just reading it through and I'm sure it will help many of us who are often lost with detailed copyright laws.

Thanks again,

Reef

I was just wondering, when you send it to yourself, does it have to be in an envelope and stamped?

Until I have my mini collection together to send off, I take the lyrics to the office Notary and have them notarize them with a date.

Then I stick them in an envelope and send them back to me registered mail.

I have no idea whether any of that works, because I haven't written one good enough to steal yet.

My understanding of copyright is that you have to be able to prove that you wrote the song at a date which precedes any of the dates used by whoever stole it. So any way of proving that date would do, in theory. Poor mans copyright works but copyrighting with a third party is best.

And always make sure you put that copyright sign on your work 'cos although here in the UK it isn't needed, for international copyright it is a requirement, or so I'm told anyway.

Pete. :)

to add it to the end of a post hold down

<alt>0169

©

Mailing yourself an envelop with your song in it will not work.  I read an article written by a patent attorney where he described how he mailed himself an open envelope.  He holds up the open envelope and says "if I put this song in there and seal it, does that prove I wrote it before the post mark?"  I can believe that no judge would accept a sealed envelope as evidence, being an attorney myself.

Well, it has worked in some cases already. Anyway, this is better than no protection at all: I've explained it dozens of times, others have done the same: PLEASE STOP ARGUING ABOUT THIS. Attorney or not: you do not make the law. The law is not the same everywhere. Judges may have different view points.

By the way: this method is endorsed in Canada by SOCAN, which is the Canadian equivalent of BMI. Give it a rest everyone: please.

The Poor-Man's copyright  - in all it's glory   :o     http://www.copyrightauthority.com/poorman.htm All you'd ever want to know about why you should NOT trust this method.   ;D

Greetings all,

I just read through these posts with some interest, and wondered if anyone here or over on the SSG or SCG boards have heard of the Creative Commons License.  If you're absolutely certain that you want money for your songs, then traditional copyright methods are probably best.  But suppose you're no too worried about the money side of things, but you would like your music / songs to be distributed or shared, because you're more concerned about exposure right now.  They have a number of distribution licenses that allow you to release your work with varying degrees of protection.  You determine what level seems right for  you.  As far as I know, it's free.  It might be worth looking into for some of the folks who frequent these parts.  You can read more about it at their website:

http://creativecommons.org

my $0.02

scratchmonkey

Here's another link that goes into "detail", or at least as much detail as can be approached on a single web page, about Copyright and Copyright Laws. Although much of this applies in the US mainly, they can generally be applied in Canada as well. I don't know about European law. A good read regardless of whether you're making money with music or not.

http://www.sundancemediagroup.com/articles/copyright.htm#Fair