How to protect copyright for songs

Only we must remember that copyright law is twofold. On the one hand, this is a personal non-property rights, for example, your name (or pseudonym) as the author. On the other – is the exclusive right of the author to use his works. For the record: copyright infringement and misappropriation of authorship, and infringement use – if they have caused serious damage to the author, is a criminal offense (article 146 of the criminal code).

So you wrote a song. Copyright rights arise upon creation of the work and any special actions for registration are not required. Another thing is that you can copy songs to provide words: © Your Name, year of writing. You can also fix the priority: the creation date of your song (very unlikely, but could happen that someone writes the same song, and in court the question arises, who did it first). Priority you can lock in special legal offices in the Russian author's society or through self – sending the song to yourself via registered mail.

Then the question arises, what exactly do you want to protect the song. Most often threats are three: your song will be given for its will publish in CD and sales will make the money; your song is used, say, in the play, the author will not indicate you will not pay; your song will prearanged in the form of karaoke or will use in another arrangement with other words and you again do not pay. That is, you are not defending the song, you protect your right to money for the legal use of your songs. And this protection is the licensing agreement.

Here is a pitfall. If you post your song on the Internet on public portals, it means that you never really know who your song is downloaded, processed, and uses it receives for your money. Of course, there is a detective Agency that will help you to find the villains, and then claim in court or Prosecutor's office, article 146 of the... pitfall in the anonymity of the Internet. But the license agreement you enter into with a specific person or entity. And in this contract you indicate the right which uses the songs you submit (the list of exclusive rights you will find in article 1270 GK RF). What is the term you pass to the right. What monies and in what order you pay for the transferred rights. What is the responsibility of the parties for failure to comply with the terms of the contract. For example, you want to released your song (or album of 10 songs – the picture does not change) in the form of a CD, and sold them. This means that according to the license agreement you must give the Studio the rights of at least reproduction (CD release), distribution (wholesalers), public display of a fragment of the song for promotional purposes, as well as if you need to make the arrangement more technically and aesthetically high quality, and for processing the songs.