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Copyright: Difference between revisions
CAPS to italics, update year count since 2000
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Certain rights, such as reproduction, do not require a public component—one unauthorized copy is enough to get you in trouble. Distribution though, requires a public component. What this means is that when a TV program uses a song in it, they do not have to get permission to reproduce the recording as part of the program, because that program is only broadcast, it is not distributed to the public. If and when they decide to sell copies of that program, then they do need permission to include the sound recording as part of the video, that's why some shows don't get released because of the additional clearances needed.
Any use of a song (music and lyrics) in a public performance generally requires a license. A broadcaster or a webcaster playing a song recording would be required to pay licensing fees for use of the underlying song (music and lyrics). Copyrights for sound recordings, due to a ridiculous tangle of state and federal laws, are notoriously hard to clear and it's best to assume that any original ''recordings'' are NOT in the public domain. However, this is different from copyrights in "musical works." The copyright law has a provision ("mechanical licenses") which requires that anyone who wants to create a cover of a song to be allowed to so long as they pay the statutory fees. The [https://web.archive.org/web/20131021051153/http://www.harryfox.com/index.jsp Harry Fox Agency] is the place to go to find out information about fees in general. Owners of the musical work copyrights (who may different than owners of the
For years the music industry has been trying to change this and get license fees paid for the use of the recording, the way the use of the underlying song has to be licensed. Record labels couldn't get past the National Association of Broadcasters ("NAB"), the trade industry group and its chief lobbying entity in Congress, so radio and television stations can still play sound recordings without paying additional license fees for the recording itself. But they could get a royalty for the use of the recording imposed on webcasters, which, in fact, the NAB loved the idea, because if the royalty fee on webcasters' use of recordings (which broadcasters do not pay) was high enough, it would kill Internet Radio, which, of course, is a competitor to NAB members and their offerings. (The NAB, of course, really doesn't like SiriusXM Satellite Radio much, either.)
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The U.S. often had special agreements with other countries that each would agree to give protection to works created in the other country subject to certain rules; these are called "Bilateral Arrangements". Near the beginning of the 20th century, the United States and many nations in Latin America developed a treaty called the "''Buenos Aires Convention''", in which a work first published in any country that is a party to the convention with a notice claiming a reservation of rights, would be granted protection in all countries that were parties to the treaty. This is where the term "All Rights Reserved" on copyright notices originated.
But at that, inertia often rules. In 2000, Nicaragua became the last country that was a member of the ''Buenos Aires Convention'' to also became a member of the Berne Convention. This means that since all of the countries of ''Buenos Aires'' are members of ''Berne'', the use of the term ''All Rights Reserved'' is completely superfluous, since the Berne Convention doesn't require any form of copyright notice. So, even though the ''All Rights Reserved'' notice is absolutely unnecessary, and has been for
Well since the United States could not accept being part of a treaty which gave copyright without including a notice on the work, to give better worldwide copyright protection, in the 1950s another copyright treaty came along called the "''Universal Copyright Convention''" (or UCC), which provided copyright protection in all countries that were parties to the convention as long as a special symbol was included on the work, along with the year the work was published and the name of the copyright owner, in a conspicuous place. The special symbol was the letter C inside a circle, which is where the C-in-a-circle feature ("©") of copyright notices came from. This was sometimes hard to generate, and in fact, the copyright office would accept as valid the use of the letter C in parenthesis "(C)" as being equivalent to "©". Since the UCC treaty used copyright notices, the U.S. could go along with it. In fact, the U.S. was the basic impetus for the creation of the UCC.
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