Poor Mans Copyright
The poor mans copyright is a way of copyrighting music without breaking the bank! Learn how to do it here...
Important!!! Remember I am not a qualified music lawyer and the information provided is from personal experience only. Always seek advice from a professional first before copyrighting.
What is poor mans copyright?
Poor mans copyright is the method of copyrighting your music using your local postal services' registered post. How it works is that all registered post is dated and sealed with a security sticker. Once the dated sticker is not broken it means whatever is contained in the envelope has been in it since that date.
The idea behind it is in the event that such intellectual property were to be misused by a third party, the poor-man's copyright would at least establish a legally-recognized date of possession before any proof which a third party may possess.
How To Do It?
- Place the work that you want to copyright, into an envelope (CD, dat tape, lyric sheet ) Make sure to write the composers name and date on the lyric sheet and cd
- Seal the envelope
- Mail the envelope to yourself through your country's registered postal service
- Do not open the mail when it arrives
- When the mail arrives keep it unopened and safe - in case you need to prove it was your work
- If you break the seal and open it it becomes worthless!
Flaws
This process of copyrighting is not recognised as the legal way of copyrighting your music and to date there are no cases of this actually standing up in court. The main reason why it is so flawed is that it can be faked.
I think what a lot of songwriters opinions tend to be is that it is better than nothing. Say you done this first while waiting for the real copyright to go through the copyright office, it would allow you to release your song to the public, while having a small bit of reassurance that if someone was to steal your music you would at least have something to go towards saying you wrote the music first.