Copyright For Emerging Artists
The most important thing to remember when it comes to the legalities of copyright and intellectual product is that it’s something you really shouldn’t worry about until the work you do becomes significant, financially.
When you’re starting out as an artist, the most important and valuable way to spend your time is creating work. A lot of people get distracted by the idea that they must copyright and protect their work when they really should be spending more time making that work great and successful.
Because that’s what matters, right?
That’s not to say that you shouldn’t keep a weather eye on your creative product and be sure no one is stealing your ideas. And there are a number of sensible precautions that a creative person can put in place to cover themselves against the theft of their intellectual property until that great day arrives somewhere in the future when your work is enjoying (or suffering) the commodification commerce brings to art.
And, at that point, if you do find yourself in a situation where someone else has taken your creative work and sold it or represented it as their own, you’ll probably need to speak with a lawyer.
And that’s expensive.
Lawyers and money
There are a lot of things you can do before you need to contact a lawyer. You should weigh up the cost of getting a lawyer to contact the person you think has ripped you off with the amount of return you can expect to get from them – minus the cost of the lawyer.
The calculation will involve working out how much the person or entity that stole your creative work is making from that theft. That’s not a particularly easy calculation to make and might not cover the cost of getting a lawyer (good lawyers cost around $600 an hour) to write and ask that they stop using your work and pay you for what it’s earned them.
The way the online world works now and the ease with which images and sound files can be easily copied and reproduced elsewhere, it’s easy to understand that the theft of creative work is an all too common offence. The simple fact is that, if people think they can get away with something, they’ll try to get away with it.
With this in mind, the most important thing you can have as the creator of a work is factual evidence that the work is your own. If a creative work has been published and marketed under your name the evidence is there in the sale and distribution of the product, whether it’s a song or art work. And you will likely have signed a publishing deal with that distribution. More on that later.
If you are an unpublished artist, evidence that the work is your own might be a little more difficult to come by, but it’s not impossible to secure. What matters is that as soon as you create a work the copyright belongs to you, it’s automatic and enshrined in law. You can add copyright symbols if you chart it and print out hard copies, if you want. You can even get an International Standard Recording Code (ISRC) for the work as a sound recording.
The Australian Performing Rights Association (APRA) is an organisation that looks after the interests of its members and provides resources to artists who want assistance with the legalities of negotiating royalties for the use of their work. If you find that you are moving into a more financially successful environment, as an artist, you should probably make contact with them in any case.
You can register your ISRC with APRA AMCOS and sign on with them as a songwriter. If you want to register your work with them, you will need to contact the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) because it issues ISRC in Australia and then APRA AMCOS will record that information as part of your membership.
Emerging artists who sign publishing deals with major labels often find that their creative works are, to some extent, copyrighted by those labels. And, for many, it’s a shock to find later that they have signed away their rights. If you are interested in what this means, the Economist magazine has produced this excellent examination of how major labels make money from artists.
What to do if someone has stolen your work
As long as you have evidence that the work is yours and you created it at a point in time before the other person started using it, you should have enough to warn them off continuing to use it without attribution or payment.
If you find that someone is using your material without your consent, in the first instance, you probably don’t even need to involve a lawyer. You can just write to them politely – it’s important to realise that they may have been misinformed about the providence of the material so there’s no point being angry when you’re communicating with them – and inform them that the material is your intellectual product and ask them to stop using it and refund any financial reward they might have gained from its use.
If you get a lot of negative responses to a reasonable approach like that, it’s probably time to start thinking about the benefits, or otherwise, of using a lawyer.
It’s important to remember that, because lawyers cost so much, it’s not a good idea to fight someone in court for anything less than forty thousand dollars. If the amount you believe you are owed because someone has broken an agreement with you or they have ripped you off is less than that, you can pursue them in a local court as an unrepresented litigant and have a judgement made by a magistrate.
But you should think carefully about the toll it will take on you to represent yourself and whether, in the end, it’s worth the hassle. It will be, if, as an artist you are making a lot of money from the hard work you’ve put into creating your artistic work. At which point you should be able to make a considered judgement about hiring an effective lawyer.
Until then, keep records of the work you produce and be ready to act on your own behalf if you think someone has ripped you off. But most important of all, don’t spend more time worrying about intellectual property rights than you need to. Creating work is all that matters.
James Gallaway
Guitar and Songwriting Teacher for Everyone Can Sing
For more information on songwriting click here