Chapter 5: Songwriting and Copyright
Songwriting
For Further Study
- Songwriter and Music Publisher Agreements
- Books
- What makes a song popular - David Tough article
- Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hour rule
- Todd and Jeff Brabec: How Songwriters, Composers, and Music Publishers Make Money
- Copyright Office - forms for registering copyright
- First-Use Mechanical Licenses. The songwriter and their publisher get to decide who records and release their song.
- Fair Use
- Creative Commons
- Copyright Law of the United States
- How long does copyright last?
- Other frequently asked questions
- Grand Upright Music, Ltd. v. Warner Bros. Records, Inc. (1991). Biz Markie was accused of appropriating part of Gilbert O'Sullivan's song.
- Bridgeport Music v. Dimension Films (2005). N.W.A.
For Further Study
- Watch the documentary Copyright Criminals.
- Watch the documentary RIP: A Remix Manifesto.
- Watch Secondhand Sureshot documentary about guys sampling records.
- Visit www.whosampled.com, study a track, and see if you can identify the samples in the song.
- Read Creative License: The Law and Culture of Digital Sampling by Kembrew McLeod and Peter DiCola. This is the companion book for the documentary Copyright Criminals.
- Read Cory Doctorrow's Content. The author chose to give it a Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike Creative Commons licenses.
- White-Smith Music Publishing v. Apollo Company, 209 U.S. 1 (1908). Ruling by the Supreme Court that publishers of piano rolls did not have to pay royalties to composers.
- Copyright Act of 1909, law enacted by Congress introducing a new mechanical license for piano rolls, and setting the length of time for a copyright to 28 years from the date of publication.
- Copyright Act of 1976
- Audio Home Recording Act of 1992. Non-commercial copying by consumers of recordings is not copyright infringement
- Telecommunications Act of 1996 - the first major overhaul of telecommuniations law in over 60 years, adding the Internet in broadcasting and spectrum allotment. Its provision for media cross-ownership caused a convergence of broadcasting and telecommunication markets.
- Digital Millenium Copyright Act (1998). Provides a "safe harbor" for Internet Service Providers and sites like YouTube to protect them from claims of copyright violation.
©2017 Robert Willey
