Musician Forum - Band Discussion Board - BandMix

The copyright office should make it as easy and cheap to copyright original material as it is to steal it. A dollar to upload and copyright a single photo or song is not unreasonable, expecting a musician to pay thirty five dollars to copyright a single song, is. Waiting to compile a catalogue of songs to copyright them all at once, is asking someone to steal your music.

Email the U.S. Copyright Office urging them to offer reasonable rates to up load and copyright single songs and poems. In the age of cell phones and mp3 recorders, nearly ubiquitous means of copying materials played or sung aloud, it is imperative that poets, musicians and song writers have an almost instantaneous method to copyright their works. Music pirates and parasites are everywhere, anyone who writes knows this, and we all need to be able to upload and copyright a song as soon as it is written to maintain our rights to those lyrics and music.

Write the copyright office and your congressmen and women and demand that the U.S. Copyright Office allow musicians and other artists to be able to setup secure individual accounts whereby we can be charged a given fee for an account and then up load works individually, for say a dollar, until our charges are depleted, then we can renew our subscription, to protect our work. Do this and the endless lawsuits to prove ownership of intellectual property will cease.

For someone to "Steal" your music... they would have to copyright it, so theoretically it DOES cost the same for someone to steal your music as it does to copyright it.

You want it as easy to copyright as it is to listen to? Well, invent a internet method of copyrighting that affects costs like filesharing does distribution.

Here's the thing, you're alluding that folks downloading your music equals a lost sale. Facts do not bear that out as true. Truth is, if folks had to pay full price for something had no idea if they liked or not, they wouldn't buy. They MIGHT download a tune, and if they like it buy the album.

Think about it for a second... how many hundreds of PRO studios in this nation turning out music 24 hours a day... Are you implying its all a "valuable product"? That listening to it one time is worth my paying for it?

Sorry, most of it is CRAP. Maybe Britteny thinks her "music" is a valuable product, maybe you think yours is... but the proof is in the sales, not the "illegal downloads". Nor in the copyrighting process.

JerryDrummond,

Your saying we should ask lawyers to give us a break? Like that is going to happen.

They lowered the rate from $40 to $35, but I would like to see it at $20 or so. I can agree with you that rates should be lowered, but to $1 is unreasonable. It costs too much to warehouse the multitudes of copyright requests they receive (even when they are digitial) and these have to be protected, and maintained for many many decades, depending upon the life of the author. Then there are all the legal aspects involved in the government being involved in copyright protection. Legal disputes come up CONSTANTLY and it involves presenting evidence from the copyright office usually.

Anyway...

I agree that the price is too stiff.

I don't care if I make a dime off my music, but if Anybody does, I want the first nickle.

You want someone to steal your music, then sell it for thousands, maybe even millions, and Prove it is worth something, Before you protect it? Most of the stuff out there is crap, so is most of the stuff in most people's houses, you still want the police to protect it, don't you, or just the stuff everybody else thinks is valuable? My music may be crap, Brittney's music may be crap, your music may be crap, but it's MY crap and I want it protected.

As for the cost of cataloging music, that's what, a dollar a gig now, and getting cheaper. So the media to catalogue a whole song costs what, a nickle? The technology to automatically write said song to a disk, off the copyright office website, and store it, is what, fifty cents? The copyright office could charge a buck or two per meg of material and still make fifty per cent profit. It's called a computer, a hard drive and a cd juke box, it ain't rocket science, and it ain't Tiffany's and it will keep thieves off the market, and that is the point.

Oh, and the crap you hear on the radio is about ten percent of the overall music market. How many gangsta production studios, or televison and radio advetising agencies have nerds phishing the web for unprotected music, then copyright a thousand pieces for $35 and make a killing when just one piece makes it big, because the writers were too poor, cheap or stupid to portect it. Sampling music is big business.

Dewy wrote:For someone to "Steal" your music... they would have to copyright it, so theoretically it DOES cost the same for someone to steal your music as it does to copyright it.

You want it as easy to copyright as it is to listen to? Well, invent a internet method of copyrighting that affects costs like filesharing does distribution.

Here's the thing, you're alluding that folks downloading your music equals a lost sale. Facts do not bear that out as true. Truth is, if folks had to pay full price for something had no idea if they liked or not, they wouldn't buy. They MIGHT download a tune, and if they like it buy the album.

Think about it for a second... how many hundreds of PRO studios in this nation turning out music 24 hours a day... Are you implying its all a "valuable product"? That listening to it one time is worth my paying for it?

Sorry, most of it is CRAP. Maybe Britteny thinks her "music" is a valuable product, maybe you think yours is... but the proof is in the sales, not the "illegal downloads". Nor in the copyrighting process.