Copyrights and royalties.

Canada
July 27, 2008 11:47am CST
There has been a lot of talk about artists not receiving their royalties on copyrighted compositions, now that just about any type of composition material can be downloaded for free. If you are a musician, as I am...would you be willing to expose your compositions on the net, just for the sake of maybe being "discovered"? Seeing as how all material that a person writes IS automatically protected by copyright, even if it's NOT actually registered, but as long as it is dated.... would you be afraid or surprised if you happened to hear your prized song(s) somewhere, had been stolen? ...and/if/or, your music IS/WAS copyright regerestered, would you demand your just royalties? What would you do about it? How would you handle it? commanderxo
1 person likes this
1 response
alpha7
@alpha7 (1910)
• France
14 Dec 09
People do not respect copyright these days,i will give an example of a video file i gave to an Entreprise to transfer into DVD some times ago and these people took it and do it the ways they like and shared the files with some other people, the proof i got was that they still printed the name of this other company involved on it.Though it is my material, i recorded and made up myself.what do i do about that,for example?Now talking of royalties is a minor case than copyright laws not been respected.
1 person likes this
commanderxo
@commanderxo (1494)
• Canada
14 Dec 09
Like I previously said: ANYTHING you personally write, create, produce, and/or record is AUTOMATICALLY Copyrighted. Whether you have officially registered the "works" or not, makes no difference. The fact remains...if YOU created it...it's yours! This is what is legally known as..."Intellectual Property"...and as such can ONLY, LEGALLY, belong to the person who naturally FIRST created it. This IS the basis behind the meaning of the word, "copyright". It wouldn't even matter if your works/material was written on a piece of bathroom tissue, scrap paper, window glass, or a strip of kitchen tin foil. What DOES matter, is being able to PROVE that the work belongs to the writer, by solely basing it on the time and/or date in which it was written and/or created. If you can prove that you created the video by the above means (by time, date, etc.) then you have legal grounds to claim your copyright. If however you have not registered your video, then I am afraid you cannot collect any royalties from it. Only REGISTERED material can be claimed for royalties, if...and only IF, it the material is sponsored by LEGAL representation (which can be you as the Producer of the material) AND is being officially broadcast or aired for PUBLIC use. Then and only then is the material entitled to receive royalty payments, which are calculated, depending on how many times the material is heard and/or seen by the public. I do agree with you though, there is very little respect these days when it comes to copyright. But proof IS the only way my friend. Here's to your continued success. Cheers; cdrxo
1 person likes this
alpha7
@alpha7 (1910)
• France
14 Dec 09
Your explanation is veru clair,very brillant too.THank you very much.Discussions of this kind are very useful.