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How Copyright law works across the world

So you've written a tune, and you want to 'copyright it'. What do you do? Does it cost money? Can I do it myself? Well, it depends where you live, but in a very strange legal way that a lot of people don't fully understand, so let's have a history lesson for a moment.
A lot of countries have what is known as 'implied copyright'. That means that by creating something, you automatically gain copyright, no fees, no letters to Congress, no forms to fill in. All you have to do is keep proof of when you first created this thing, and then you can battle through the courts when someone else claims to have thought of it first. Whoever can prove they had the brainwave before the other wins. Now this was all nice and sensible, but it was still a problem if the other person was from a different country - for a start where do you sue? His place or yours? So a good many countries got together in 1886 and created the Berne Convention. This is an international agreement that basically says the members will police copyright for each other, so an infringement in any member country is just as easy to deal with as one from your neighbor. It has two prime statements:

1. The principle of national treatment
2. The principle of automatic protection

(1) means that the courts can apply home-nation law to a prosecution, for example if you, an Englishman, have copyright on a poem and it's stolem by a German, then you can prosecute him in Germany and under German laws - this makes it a lot easier and faster to get convictions.
(2) means that implied copyright is assumed - even in countries where there is an official way to register copyrights, you don't have to do so in order to be protected. You just need adequate proof you created the work first.

The Berne Convention protects every citizen of the 100+ member countries, and in general works are protected up to 50 years after the death of the creator. It gives the creator certain exclusive rights, such as the right to make or authorise translations, reproductions and public performances. In other words, our example Englishman must be asked for permission if anyone wanted to translate his poem into Russian, or French, or read it out to a crowd at an Indian cricket match. In reality of course most authors turn a blind eye to anything that doesn't cause financial loss.

OK, so the Berne Convention sounds good.. but it only covers around 100 countries and it's a bit restrictive on what it decides is 'copyrightable'. So along we go to 1952, and the Universal Copyright Convention (UCC), created by the United Nations. This covers more countries but is less powerful. It sticks with the 'national treatment' idea but it does not include the idea of automatic protection. It requires that the national protocols for registering copyright in the creator's home country be followed, whatever they are. In countries such as the USA this means paying $30 to register with the Library of Congress. It protects artistic; literary and original scientific works (including lyrics and musical scores) and generally continues protection for 25 years after death.

Both the UCC and BC have exemptions for 'reasonable use' - mostly things like the right for governments and law enforcement agencies to take copies, for public libraries and schools to make copies for education, and so on. The international conventions are now all controlled by another branch of the United Nations called WIPO - the World Intellectual Property Organisation. A lot of people now refer to the UCC/BC and similar agreements just as the 'WIPO agreements'.

You're going to go mad with anticipation if we don't say at this point that the USA is a member of both the BC and UCC, so we will. Being in BOTH doesn't make things easier by the way.. it makes things worse. Hey, did we ever say this was going to make sense??

CLICK HERE for a list of the Berne and UCC countries who have legal agreements with the USA - if your work is stolen by someone in a place on this list, then you as an American can sue them for it. All the agreements are reciprocal, so Americans can be sued if they steal things from these places too!

How do I protect my work?

If you're in a Berne Convention country then you really need do very little. If you're in a UCC country, then a little more. Let's start with the easy one - Berne. It says you have implied copyright, so all you must do is PROVE when you first created the work. The simplest and most widely-used method of doing this is called self-posted-proof or SPP. Here you put the work (lyrics, or a musical score, even a tape or CD of a sound recording) into an envelope, seal it in a special way and mail it to yourself recorded-delivery. When you get it back, you never open it. The 'special way to seal it' is just this - you make sure that the stamps, postmarks and so on are positioned on the package in such a way that it can't have been mailed empty and filled later, so for example stick the stamps over the sealing flaps. When this package floats back into your mailbox, you file it away safely until you need it in court. Then by submitting it UNOPENED to the court they can tell that you had access to the work on the day of posting, that day becomes the official date you claim for creation.

For a UCC country that's NOT in the Berne Convention you must follow the national rules. In general these can be satisfied by what is called the UCC Claim Notice - on every copy of the work you put the copyright symbol ( © ), date and your name. This is usually ALL you have to do, but let us go off on a tangent again for you guys in the USA....

As a member of the UCC, everyone in the USA has protection for their work provided they put the ©1066 Harold King notice on the work. When the US joined the Berne Convention in 1989 they had to change the law, as BC says 'automatic copyright, no need for that © anymore!'. BUT they left a loophole. If an author doesn't use the © symbol then a defendant can claim 'innocent use' - in other words they can get away with it by saying they didn't know it was copyrighted 'cos there wasn't a © on it. This also holds true in a lot of other BC countries, so It's best to put the UCC © statement on EVERYTHING even if you're in a Berne country.

The infamous Library of Congress Loophole

In the USA there is a lot of talk of Library of Congress registration. Here, you send the work to the LOC and pay $30, they then act as guarantors of the date of creation. Under the WIPO conventions you do not need to do this but the US Government has a trick up its sleeve. It managed to get sections into the national legislation to make sure that unless you register your copyright with the LOC you CANNOT do the following:

1. Bring a prosecution within the USA for infringement of copyright
2. Claim statutory legal fees in a prosecution
3. Prohibit the import of infringing copies via the US Customs Service

One very important thing - you do NOT need to register the copyright in advance in order to bring a lawsuit in the USA, you can register it before suing by using your automatic Berne rights to prove ownership. However unless you register before any infringement takes place you still can't claim legal costs if you win your day in court. Items 2 and 3 are the reason why every commercial musician and record label registers their copyrights as a matter of course. If you're not too concerned about people stealing your work and making millions but just want to make it plain that you own the work and could get angry if you wanted to, then you still have your rights under WIPO. Forget the $30, plater © on everything and hope that when you decide it's finally worth your cash to register, nobody's been secretly importing millions of copies via an empty beach in Maine. You'll certainly find that as soon as you get 'commercial' enough to have a manager or a label sign you up, everything you ever wrote will be sent off to the LOC faster than you can say 'thirty bucks'.