A2IM, as representatives of small and medium sized music creator businesses with limited resources, filed comments with the U.S. Copyright in response to the Copyright Office Notice of Intent related to Technological Upgrades to Registration and Recordation Functions. A2IM supports this Technological upgrade initiative that the Copyright Office is undertaking but at the same time wanted to highlight the concerns of small and medium sized creators in implementing these changes. Most of these concerns are related to our communities limited resources and the goal of protecting the ownership of our copyrights. The full filing is HERE, please let us know any additional thoughts you might have.
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As we reported to you previously, the Copyright Office is contemplating increasing the fees to register your copyrights over 80% during a period when copyright registration has never been more important to protect your rights and recover damages. Last week A2IM filed a response to the Copyright Office in opposition to the proposed fee increases.
The Dean’s List published an item last week linking to the Fulbright & Jaworski website which noted that on March 28th the U.S. Copyright Office announced a proposal to increase the fee to register copyrights digitally from the current $35 to $65, an 85% increase. The first question is should you register your copyrights? There is no legal requirement to register your copyrights and you can assert ownership many other ways. For example you can mail a letter to yourself and not open it and use the postmark as proof or go to a notary and get your written song notarized with a date. Despite the lack of a copyright registration requirement, A2IM advises our members that you should register your copyrights. The primary reason to register is if you need to prove ownership in litigation, especially against unauthorized music services infringing upon the work of your label’s artists. Without copyright registration, a music label or artist will have no standing with the courts and will be unable to sue for statutory damages until the copyright is registered and then the damages will only be for prospective infringements. Another reason would be the pending changes at the U.S. Copyright Office regarding the rights to Pre-1972 Copyrights which we reported to you earlier this year. The pre-1972 copyrights proposal is basically a ‘use it or lose it” situation where you need to keep your music “publicly available” to keep copyright protection thru 2067 (easy enough in the digital age) with a transition period of six to ten years to ensure all materials are available. The onerous part of this might be the initial; and potential renewal, copyright office registration process. A2IM will file with the US Copyright Office against enacting this proposed price increase which will cause a financial hardship upon our community. But before this potential rates increase occurs, maybe you should get an intern in to register the copyrights for your key tracks, especially any pre-1972 copyrights, as a good business practice. Register your song with the U.S. Copyright Office for $35 today.
The U.S. Copyright Office has issued its summary report on U.S. Copyrights which maintains copyright protection for pre-1972 Copyrights thru 2067, as long as they remain available for sale. As we had reported to you previously, pre-1972 Copyrights are currently under individual state jurisdictions but the U.S. Copyright Office has proposed that they come under federal jurisdiction which has created a concern regarding accelerated copyright termination dates.
The Copyright Office released their report on Pre-1972 Sound Recordings and while they do propose federalization, as opposed to keeping them under state jurisdiction, for post-1923 Copyrights the termination date remains 2067. Pre-1923 copyrights would be limited to a 25 year copyright extension.
The proposal is basically a ‘use it or lose it” situation where you need to keep your music “publicly available” to keep copyright protection thru 2067 (easy enough in the digital age) with a transition period of six to ten years to ensure all materials are available. The onerous part of this might be the initial, and potential ongoing, copyright office registration process. That said, overall this result is favorable and we’ll see if we need to file comments on our registration concerns.
For copies of the Copyright Office’s executive summary and the complete report see the links below:
In February 2011 A2IM filed comments with the U.S. Copyright Office with our creator colleagues from the RIAA. There are those in the music community who want pre-1972 copyrights to be moved under federal legal jurisdiction which could have the potential result of label copyright rights reverting at an earlier date than current law, ignoring the recording and marketing investments of the label creator community. A2IM’s position is that the current state laws should continue to dictate rights and that the copyright office’s focus should be focused on funding music preservation, federal funding for retention of masters, storage, categorization and digitization of music. A2IM also supports allowing access for these recordings by libraries, educational institutions, museums and other not-for-profits and supports facilitating making available these copyrights, especially those that are out-of-print, to the Library of Congress and allow the Library to stream only these recordings. The full filing is here. We also want to thank A2IM members Larry Blake of Concord and Mark Jenkins of Countdown Media for participating in this filing.
