UK COPYRIGHT LAW

[Guest]

I can tell you why the poor man's letter or envelope will not work.
Exhibit A. You go to trial for a case and use the envelope as evidence to prove your case. The judge orders your lawyer to open the sealed containment in order to prove your claim. You prove your claim and win the case, end of story you go home happy and rich.

Then one year later another person infringes your copyright, only now you've already opened the seal that won your case before, uh oh, what now? You will lose the case because you only had one sealed envelope. You need to think of the bigger picture sometimes.

If a person is really that successful that people are taking their work from them and they easily know about it, you need to think of a bigger plan because music is not a one versus one world it's a community of billions of people.

[John Willett]

I can tell you why the poor man's letter or envelope will not work.
Exhibit A. You go to trial for a case and use the envelope as evidence to prove your case. The judge orders your lawyer to open the sealed containment in order to prove your claim. You prove your claim and win the case, end of story you go home happy and rich.

Then one year later another person infringes your copyright, only now you've already opened the seal that won your case before, uh oh, what now? You will lose the case because you only had one sealed envelope. You need to think of the bigger picture sometimes.

If a person is really that successful that people are taking their work from them and they easily know about it, you need to think of a bigger plan because music is not a one versus one world it's a community of billions of people.

Er - but you now have a previous court case that proves your copyright.

So this case can be quoted in any subsequant case.

[Martin Walker]

Er - but you now have a previous court case that proves your copyright.

So this case can be quoted in any subsequant case.

Yep, that thought immediately occurred to me too John.

Martin

[Mike Stranks]

And currently...

Those of us providing web-based services/information for our communities in these troubled times need to be aware of copyright restrictions on the use of pre-recorded music...

Just stumped-up £175 so that I'm legal... Ho hum...

[Sam Spoons]

Who was that to Mike? MCPS?

[Mike Stranks]

Who was that to Mike? MCPS?

PRS...

https://www.prsformusic.com/licences/using-music-online/limited-online-music-licence

I did get a free logo to use on my sites though!

[Sam Spoons]

Thanks, we have a PRS/PPL licence to use recorded music for live classes but online is different. The person we spoke to at PRS/PPL said they couldn't licence music for online classes/lessons

[TJ1]

I guess what a lot f people want is the peace of mind to know that their copyright is protected, before the seek to put their work in the public domain.

I realize it would cost more money than the simple sealed envelope route: but lets say you had a couple of sheets of paper with your music and lyrics on it.

If you got any solicitor/lawyer for lets say £30-50 to date stamp it and confirm they had sight of the document -before sending it to yourself, would that give you additional protection?

I am not really talking about getting the services of a high priced music lawyer, rather any above shop wills/beneficiary solicitor who has experience of attesting to the authenticity of documents.

[MOF]

I then started thinking about the sealed polythene envelopes that you get on parcels that you cannot simply open or steam open.

It doesn’t stop unscrupulous individuals sending those types of envelopes, unsealed, to themselves and later enclosing their ripped off composition materials in the envelope then sealing it properly.
I used to send my compositions on cassette to myself and put stamps across one end of the envelope seal and the Recorded Delivery stamp across the other end. It occurred to me at the time that it wasn’t 100% infallible as proof.

[CS70]

I guess what a lot f people want is the peace of mind to know that their copyright is protected, before the seek to put their work in the public domain.

I realize it would cost more money than the simple sealed envelope route: but lets say you had a couple of sheets of paper with your music and lyrics on it.

If you got any solicitor/lawyer for lets say £30-50 to date stamp it and confirm they had sight of the document -before sending it to yourself, would that give you additional protection?

I am not really talking about getting the services of a high priced music lawyer, rather any above shop wills/beneficiary solicitor who has experience of attesting to the authenticity of documents.

I guess nowadays your best bet is to simply upload to an independent large third party service (which essentially means YT and similar).

In case of litigation (outside the US) it's all about who has more arguments, and an independent timestamp that cannot be easily tampered with by both parties is probably hard to beat - and costs nothing.

The laywer thing, I don't think it would be much better than the envelope. I think few judges think that lawyers are saints and a lawyer word would mean little, because it's far easier to tamper with than a completely independent, neutral upload page. Especially when there's significant money at stake - like there must be for a litigation to make sense.

In certain countries you have notaries whose professional job is exactly to act as good faith witnesses (and they get paid pretty well for that!) and in many others their function is replaced by government officials.. however, they tend to enter the picture for existing, concrete transactions, and for something like a recording the chain of custody would be hard to maintain (unless there's a dedicated government office... cue the US Copyright Office).

Maybe if you deposited in a bank..

So imho a lawyer would be a waste of money.

[TJ1]

I guess nowadays your best bet is to simply upload to an independent large third party service (which essentially means YT and similar).

In case of litigation (outside the US) it's all about who has more arguments, and an independent timestamp that cannot be easily tampered with by both parties is probably hard to beat - and costs nothing.

The laywer thing, I don't think it would be much better than the envelope. I think few judges think that lawyers are saints and a lawyer word would mean little, because it's far easier to tamper with than a completely independent, neutral upload page. Especially when there's significant money at stake - like there must be for a litigation to make sense.

In certain countries you have notaries whose professional job is exactly to act as good faith witnesses (and they get paid pretty well for that!) and in many others their function is replaced by government officials.. however, they tend to enter the picture for existing, concrete transactions, and for something like a recording the chain of custody wo

uld be hard to maintain (unless there's a dedicated government office... cue the US Copyright Office).

Maybe if you deposited in a bank..

So imho a lawyer would be a waste of money.

Thank you that is very helpful, I only raised the lawyer issue because it seems the consensus in this discussion and on other sites is that posting it to yourself does not seem alone to constitute a guaranteed method of establishing copyright in many courts.

[chrisnubile]

I’m interested to know… without stating the bleeding obvious, but in this day and age of all of the relevant data being digital files, surely presentation of the original recordings and demos etc which would have digital time stamps on the files that predate anyone else’s would suffice as evidence?

So if at the point of recording we back up to one or more removable secure media and/or a secure cloud service, surely we have time stamped ‘archives’ we can wheel out of need be?

[Wonks]

Trusted 3rd party storage maybe, but as it’s easy enough to set your own computer clock to any time and date you want it to be, and so create a file stamped with that time, your own digital archives would probably not be considered reliable enough.

Files stored in the cloud should be stamped locally with the time the files were created, so bar some serious hacking skills, that should be considered as evidence of the date they were uploaded. But you’d need to check if any of this has been tested in case law before relying on it 100%.

[Folderol]

At one time the recommendation was to make a physical copy and leave it with a solicitor - but that gets expensive!

[WilliamAshley]

I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice however I have read a lot on this subject. I've also signed up as a publisher in another country.

Generally speaking some countries have specific copyright offices where works can be registered. Publishers may also have a national library that they may be able to or required to deposit published materials to.

In this UK it is as per the Legal Deposit Libraries Act 2003, publishers are required to deposit a copy of every work published in the UK with the British Library and other designated legal deposit libraries, including the National Library of Scotland. The Legal Deposit Libraries (Non-Print Works) Regulations 2013 extended the right to collect, preserve and make accessible digital publications and websites that were created within the UK domain.

There is also a process called notarization - where a professional with the power to say this is really something on a specific date is like a rubber stamp for documents to authenticate them as bonefide existing authentically.

Generally speaking a work is available to the public when it is published, getting an IRSC and publishing a work is not overly difficult. Each IRSC is suppose to be unique but is not proof itself but it would likely help support if that IRSC was registered with the national library as a legal dated deposit.

The reason why I mention these two methods is because
A deposit with the National Library is considered legal proof in the UK. This is because legal deposit is a statutory obligation under the Legal Deposit Libraries Act 2003, which requires publishers to give copies of their publications to designated libraries. There is AFAIK no charge for deposits with the national library.

Also a notarized document is legal in the UK. Notarization is a legal process that ensures the authenticity of a document, making it valid for official use. Unless you know a notary or other solicitor who will do this for you you will likely need to pay for the notarization if they will notarize non print documents. They likely will not be able to notarize the physical copies of music files, recordings but they may be able to notarize some type of statement about words being deposited as proof of the deposit. A bank official may also have this same ability to legalize a deposit officially.

Some countries have statutory relief that can only be gotten with official registration. Generally you may not be limited to file in the country of origin, often copyright is generated by the act of creation in the country of origin, then you may file in other countries if you publish the work in those countries. The rules differ by country.

I thought some of this may be useful but it is just opinion not legal advice. Publishing is not super difficult but it does involve some paperwork like most other logging with PROs etc..