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Copyright registration establishes the legal owner and/or publisher of
intellectual property for works such as musical compositions or the lyrics for a
song. In music, two registration forms are the most common. The PA Form and the
SR Form.
PA Forms are used to copyright the composition itself, while SR Forms are intended
to protect the sound recording of intellectual property. It is important to
understand the difference between these two forms. Theoretically, you could
copyright a terrific song using the PA Form, record your project and start
selling your CDs in stores everywhere. But if you had never registered the sound
recording of your song using the SR Form, another band could send in the very
same recording using an SR Form and claim that your recording belonged to them.
You would be credited for ownership of the song, but they would get the credit
for all your hard labor in the recording studio and collect all the mechanical
royalties! Hopefully that brief scenario shows just how important the SR Form
really is.
The good news is that you can use the SR Form to do the job of both forms. Simply
download the SR
Form and, in the space called NATURE OF AUTHORSHIP, enter something along
the lines of "All music and sound recording." This will protect your interest in
both the composition as well as the recording, all in one form, thereby saving
you the cost of a second registration (currently $45 per registered form). This
will not work if you use the form PA. Your application will be rejected if you
do not use the SR Form to cover both aspects of your copyright.
If you are writing and recording a song with someone else, each space for the
NATURE OF AUTHORSHIP might read, "50% of all music and sound recording." Please
note that you can not split percentages with regard to the sound recording.
Everyone involved in the recording shares the same interest in the sound
recording, even if different weighted percentages are used with regard to
ownership of the actual song. If only one person or a few people own the song
and more people are involved in the recording ownership who are not defined as
providing a "work for hire" then a PA Form should be used to file for ownership
and a separate SR Form should be used for copyright of the sound recording.
To save even more money by making the most of your SR Form, register several songs
at once. You can register them as a "collection" by entering the name of the
collection on the first title space and the individual "content titles" in the
second space. To do this all authors must have the same percentages of ownership
for each song. In other words, if you wrote one song all by yourself and the
second song was written by two people, you would need to use a separate SR Form
for each song. If you wrote all the songs yourself, or the same people wrote all
the songs with the same ownership splits, you can use one form to register all
the songs.
Finally, remember that PA Forms are all that is necessary to copyright lyrics
only since there is no sound recording involved in the copyright. To copyright
lyrics all you need is a PA Form, your lyric sheets, and your payment. Keep in
mind that you can copyright the lyrics to several songs too, using the same
principles described above. Have fun!
Download
the SR Form or PA Form!
Find additional information and instructions on how to file a copyright by visiting the
Library of Congress
Copyright Web site!
Be sure to check out the other types of copyright forms like the TX Form for
poetry, books and other non-dramatic works. They can all be found at the links
shown above!
If you are still mystified or simply want to know more about copyright information,
trends and perspectives on fair use, and attitudes toward sampling, etc., check
out
Negativeland.com's page on intellectual property issues.
We've got tons of free stuff in our Members Only area.
To gain access join the DWP Support Network
and use your DWP Support Pass.
It's FREE!
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