Copyright is the intangible, intellectual property right that you have in your original creative works, provided those works have been fixed in a tangible medium. In the United States, copyright is a Constitutionally protected right, but its exact parameters are set by statute and case law, as well as by international copyright treaties and agreements.
Wow, that's a lot of big lawyer words. Let's parse through them a bit.
Copyright is an intangible right. Although you can see or hear or feel your painting, sculpture, novel, play or song, and can thus have a tangible property right in that object, copyright is more of an idea than a thing. It's a right to do certain things with your original creative intellectual property, such as write a sequel or prequel, make posters or coffee mugs out of the image of your painting, and to duplicate and sell your own work.
Copyright protects creative intellectual property. Your house is a type of legal entity called real property; your kitchen table is a type of legal entity called personal property. Real property and personal property have economic worth based on fair market value--what the item sells for. Intellectual property--ideas, designs, plans--also have economic worth, but are a bit more difficult logistically to insure and protect from theft. Copyright laws are intended to protect the economic value of creative original ideas, so that creative people can be able to make a living and generate more creative ideas to better all of society. Other intellectual property laws, like trademark and patent law, are also intended to protect the economic value of original creative thoughts.
Copyright laws do not attach to an idea, however, until it is 'fixed in a tangible medium,' which means written down or recorded somewhere. The song in your head, even if you walk around humming it, is not yet protected by copyright law. Hum it into your hand-held digital recorder, however, and copyright protections attach. The danger is, if you walk around singing it before recording it or writing it down, and someone else picks it up and hums it into their recorder, you will not hold the copyright on it.
Copyright belongs to the 'author' of a work, but copyright can be shared on collaborative projects. For example, in The Mermaid's Tale video above, my band partner Tom Hanley and I share the copyright on the music and lyrics of the song about the mermaid who lures sailors to their doom, but the extremely talented Emilie Rodgers, www.emilierodgers.com, created the animated interpretation of the song and owns the copyright in the animated video. In this case, Emilie and I exchanged a license--permission to use each other's copyrighted works--so that we could show the video with our song, and she can show people the video with our song in it.
Copyright attaches to a creative work, like a song, as soon as you fix it in a tangible medium--but enforcement of your copyrights may be difficult if you have not registered your song with the U.S. Copyright Office. Registration is easy and inexpensive--and is even easier and less expensive if you register a batch of songs together as a collection. More on registration in the next post, but in the meantime, bookmark the U.S.Copyright Office webpage, http://www.copyright.gov/, and make it your friend. It's a surprisingly user-friendly, with plain English FAQs and simple online forms.
So rock on--but write it down, and then register it!
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