Outrageous New Copyright Issues!

[Wookiee]

Historically there was a time when record companies only paid for 10 songs on an album.  So if you had an album with 11 songs you did not get paid for the 11th.

Please keep this thread away from political statements and friendly too thanks.

[msmcleod]

On 8/23/2019 at 6:25 AM, craigb said:

Change your genre to Progressive Rock.  Four songs and the album is done! 😆

damn you beat me to it !

[slartabartfast]

Group Registration of Unpublished works revisited:

As a correction to my previous post here. I was quoting from an explanatory circular that I downloaded 8/23/19 from the US Copyright Office website, and misread the policy. Keni seems to have it right that the new Group Registration policy has replaced the previous policy of registering an unlimited number of individual unpublished works under one registration as a collective work. The final rule, and the rationale for the change, is published in the Federal Register here:

https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2019-02-13/pdf/2019-02185.pdf

and the updated Code of Federal Regulations here:

https://www.copyright.gov/title37/202/37cfr202-3.html
https://www.copyright.gov/title37/202/37cfr202-4.html

The Copyright Office has made an administrative change that does not permit registering unpublished work as a compilation of an unlimited number of individual works and has tightened the restriction on the types of work that may be registered together under the new group registration categories. A collective work could be a group of works that would normally fall in dissimilar categories, but under group registration, most of the works must be of the same type/administrative class or closely related. So now the effective limit to individual unpublished songs under a single registration is ten. Since you can still opt to register both the phonorecord/master recording/audio deposit and the underlying musical composition and lyrics using the single application, some people are counting that as twenty registrations for the price of one--but it is still just ten songs per application/claim. The Office claims that this limit will allow more effective verification of authorship of individual works, but admits that, "To maintain reasonable fees for this service, this requires an appropriate limit on the number of works included in each claim." 

One potential benefit of the group registration is that the registration for the grouped songs is considered to grant each individual song its own registration. Under the collective works option, the registration had been interpreted to cover only the whole compilation as a single protected work. That would in practice matter if someone infringed several songs from the compilation, in which case the copyright owner could only claim one infringement of the compilation giving him the potential to claim statutory damages on only one copyright. If the courts see it the way the Office expects, then each individual song of a group that is infringed would be eligible for separate damages, since they were not registered as a collective work, but each is individually registered under special rules for the group registration. Following that logic, the group registration does not provide a registered copyright claim to the work as a whole, ie the selection arrangement of the songs etc.that is separate from the individual songs. So you are not really registering an album here, but just a group of songs. 

In addition to the limit on the number of songs that can be claimed under one application, the new rule requires that group registrations must be submitted online and not on paper applications with a few exceptions. In addition:

(c)Group registration of unpublished works. 

Pursuant to the authority granted by 17 U.S.C. 408(c)(1), the Register of Copyrights has determined that a group of unpublished works may be registered in Class TX, PA, VA, or SR with one application, the required deposit, and the filing fee required by § 201.3(c) of this chapter, if the following conditions are met:

(1) All the works in the group must be unpublished, and they must be registered in the same administrative class.

(2) Generally, the applicant may include up to ten works in the group. If the conditions set forth in § 202.3(b)(1)(iv)(A) through (C) have been met, the applicant may include up to ten sound recordings and ten musical works, literary works, or dramatic works in the group.

(3) The group may include individual works, joint works, or derivative works, but may not include compilations, collective works, databases, or websites.

(4) The applicant must provide a title for each work in the group.

(5) All the works must be created by the same author or the same joint authors, and the author and claimant information for each work must be the same.

(6) The works may be registered as anonymous works, pseudonymous works, or works made for hire if they are identified in the application as such.

(7) The applicant must identify the authorship that each author or joint author contributed to the works, and the authorship statement for each author or joint author must be the same. Claims in the selection, coordination, or arrangement of the group as a whole will not be permitted on the application.

(8) The applicant must complete and submit the online application designated for a group of unpublished works. The application may be submitted by any of the parties listed in § 202.3(c)(1).

(9) The applicant must submit one complete copy or phonorecord of each work. Each work must be contained in a separate electronic file that complies with § 202.20(b)(2)(iii). The files must be submitted in one of the electronic formats approved by the Office, they must be assembled in an orderly form, and they must be uploaded to the electronic registration system. The file size for each uploaded file must not exceed 500 megabytes; the files may be compressed to comply with this requirement.

(10) In an exceptional case, the Copyright Office may waive the online filing requirement set forth in paragraph (c)(8) of this section or may grant special relief from the deposit requirement under § 202.20(d), subject to such conditions as the Associate Register and Director of the Office of Registration Policy and Practice may impose on the applicant.

So if you are trying to register a group of songs that have not been published yet, you need to follow the new rules including the limit of ten songs per application, and the use of the new online form. Of course registration of unpublished work is not the usual course of events with copyright, which generally applies to published work. If you want to copyright an album of twenty songs under a single title, you still have the opportunity to do that on publication. So waiting until you are ready to publish may save you a little money. Otherwise you are going to pay at least $5.50 per song if you can register them in groups of ten at a time.