Re: registering a composition

[Tim McNamara]

> On May 21, 2020, at 3:34 AM, Valentin Villenave <address@hidden> wrote:
> 
> On 5/21/20, Francesco Petrogalli <address@hidden> wrote:
>> I have written it with lilypond, but it hasn't been performed yet. I
>> wanted to secure the copyright before performing it. Given that there
>> is no performing artist yet, there is no recording, so I cannot
>> register it with ASCAP. Have I got this right?
> 
> No registration anywhere is needed to "secure the copyright". All you
> need to have is a way of proving your anteriority if anyone were to
> come and claim they’ve written it instead of you. There are several
> commercial services that can do that for you (though many are scams),
> but there are cheaper and simpler ways; a simple web search brought me
> to the following page:
> https://copyright.co.uk/legal-copyright-law.html

Copyright law is nationally controlled, not internationally controlled for the 
most part.  There is a degree of reciprocity.  In the US, copyright is 
automatically granted to creators but copyright is also divided- the creator 
has rights but so does the publisher, which matters in terms of royalty 
payments if the work is recorded or performed.  As the saying goes, keep the 
publishing.  Thousands of artists and composers lost out on billions of dollars 
because they signed the publishing away in the early days of their careers in 
the fine print of a recording contract.  This has been standard practice in the 
recording industry since its inception and has beggared many a 
musician/composer.  I do not feel bad at all about the slow death of the major 
labels since the the internet made their business model basically non-viable; 
most of them have been right bastards to artists.  Create your own publishing 
company wholly owned by you.

I don't know about ASCAP; I use BMI and songs can be registered with them prior 
to recording or performance.  ASCAP and BMI seem to work about the same as do 
all the performance rights organizations (PROs) in the US; these only cover 
live performance.  I register my songs when I judge them completed, even though 
no one else will likely ever perform them since I am completely unknown and 
they are usually weird.  I write to amuse myself, mainly.  Recording royalties 
through mechanical licenses in the US are managed almost universally through 
the Harry Fox Agency.

As for proving that you are the originator of a composition, thankfully your 
computer records the creation date of your files.  That will almost certainly 
never be challenged unless you write a hit record and someone decides they want 
a piece of those royalties.  That has led to some truly bizarre examples of 
jurisprudence (suing an artist for plagiarizing themselves, for example; suing 
an artist for writing music that doesn't sound like stuff they've written 
before, etc.).