Originally Posted By: justanoldmuso

1. the creative innocents out there.

by this i mean someone on this crazy planet creates a new song..maybe someone very poor in a poor country…how is that person EXPECTED to check the millions of songs created over the years to ensure he/she isnt infringeing somehow on someone else ??
bottom line how does this person do 'due diligence' given the above ??


I believe this is more common in IP (patents). You can hire people to search within patents to check if you're infringing on anyone. Perhaps something similar exists in music.

In general though, nobody cares until a song becomes big, and even if the original artist takes 100% of the royalties for that song, the publicity you get from the song will help the rest of your catalog, and you as an artist.

If a dispute comes up, from what I hear the official(s) that listen to both songs, and subjectively determine whether there is an infringement or not.

If Mike chimes in, I'm sure he can provide a better answer, mine might not be entirely correct.


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2. the government/registration agencies.

'thats like my xyz song' ? particularly if the new creation made a small fortune ?
bottom line again how does the agency do 'due diligence' given the zillions of creative works out there ?? and to what degree does their granting of an application protect the applicant ?

3, the chords/notes issue.

viz songwriters specifically …there are only 12 notes in western music and only so many chords/inversions/extensions etc etc. THUS its pretty obvious that at some point there will be overlaps with previous works due to the world volume of previous creative works.
some big names often have said they were influenced by an earlier work…
eg a riff in an old piece of classical music. its obvious that there must be some degree of overlap tween artists song creations given that tech has allowed zillions of homes on the planet have project studios and computers right ??


I remember hearing about how some music industry guys wrote a program to create every imaginable melody, (ie. millions? billions?) and they copyrighted them and made them available for the public to use, like creative commons... something along those lines. Seems like it was kind of a gimmick, but I know someone did that. (found it: source)


I have heard concerns, that with all the AI and algorithms we have these days, and huge artists selling their huge catalogs, that big corporations that own these catalogs will have bots that just copyright strike any song that remotely resembles a riff / melody line / etc within their catalog.

This is only a theory, but sounds plausible and concerning.


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Do people on these forums see what I mean re the above ?
AND is it worth it for a very poor person to spend lots of money they cant afford to protect their creative works IF STILL one can become embroiled in ip issues ?
poor people cant afford legal teams of course.


I'm also just trying to determine how to navigate this dilemma. Put out music, while offering myself enough protection, while at the same time not needlessly spending money.

The least amount of protection is better than nothing, and shouldn't be too costly, I'm still trying to figure out what that is (I'm drafting a response to Mike's mention of 3rd party registration services regarding that).

One idea I had the past few days is registering the copyrights in Mexico, since it's $15 a song vs. $45-$65 in the US. However, both the US and Mexican copyright office told me that you can only litigate within each respective country where you made your copyright. Makes me wonder whether labels copyright each song in various countries, or how they do it. I imagine almost no individual artist is copyrighting their song in any other country besides their own.