Copyright
 

What is the cheapest and easiest way to copyright stuff?

And don't say mail it to yourself, from what I understand, that won't hold up in court.

I have around 150 sets of song lyrics that I've written, and I wish to copyright them so I can sell them, and work on them.

I don't wish to pay $30.00 per song though.

Any help please? :confused:

Garageband.com has a deal where you can copyright an entire CD's worth of songs for the price of one song:

http://faq.garageband.com/index.php?...=76&artlang=en

I have no idea what the actual price is- but copyrighting 150 songs ain't gonna be cheap.

I have read a bit about copyrighting, and US copyright laws protect intellectual property the moment it is created.

Technically, by posting my stories here, i am setting a copyright date the moment i click "Submit Reply".

you could email them to yourself, and it could possibly hold up in court. use gmail, they keep copies forever (just dont delete them), and they would be time-stamped, and, since you are emailing them to yourself, they arent visible by anyone but you, unless you choose to show them.

Food for thought. Its free ;)

From the US Copyright website
http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ50.html#collections

Two or more unpublished songs, song lyrics, or other musical works may be registered with one application and fee, but only under certain conditions stated in the Copyright Office regulations. One of those conditions is that the copyright owner or owners must be the same for all the songs.

Basically you can copyright an entire album under a collection title and pay only one registration fee; you simply need to fill out a continuation sheet to list all the songs in the collections.

By meaning collections, can it not be separated at that point?

Basically, I don't have the entire songs finished, just typed lyrics. If I send them all as a collection, will I be able to sell them at some point in the future? Individually?

In the USA as long as it is written down it is copyrighted. That is what I have heard on NPR. You could also try to have a Notary notarize each page that you have with a date stamp that way no one can say that they wrote it before you. But i am not sure on that one.

If it is just the lyrics, you could call it a book of poetry and copyright the whole thing together.

All the advice like mailing it in an envelope or emailing to to yourself will give you shoddy protection at best. If you ever come into a situation where you have to prove the works are yours and yours alone you want them officially registered at the copyright office.

Just call it a book of poetry and send it all in together.

Yes, register it as a collection, with the Library of Congress.

You can as well do this with snail mail, I recently done this. Address it from yourself, to yourself! When the Post office handles it, it marks the date, just don't open it up, leave it sealed!