I truly hope that no-one find offense with anything I place in this article. I am not a lawyer, just a music enthusiast who has done research trying to weed out illegitimate web entities out there in today's world. Please make note that I would not be a member of THIS website if I had any reservations with them whatsoever, thus nothing in my articles are pointed towards Karaoke-Scene, Karaoke-Forum or Singer's Showcase. I truly feel this is where we all should be if we have even an ounce of love for today's aspiring musician's.
Copyrights and Trademarks are extremely necessary to survive in today’s music/entertainment industry. If you have created a song the first thing you should do prior to allowing anyone to review or submitting the song in a contest of any capacity is get the piece copyrighted.
Copyrights
Company Name – Unless your company name is also trademarked as a BRAND, other companies can use phrases from your name within documentation for their published documentation. Just because you have copyrighted a company name, doesn’t mean that noone in the world can use part of or your entire web site name without the www or .com in reference to anything they desire.
Music – Song Titles, Lyrics, and scores can be copyright protected.
Trademarks
Brands - for your company
Images - on your web site – ensure that these are truly YOUR images and modified only with image and effects tools that you truly have a registration for.
It’s really easy to get information on copyrighting materials, pitfalls of persons who have NOT copyrighted their music, and reasons you should. Please note that most contests you enter claim rights to your music. If going into the contest, you have your material copyrighted, then copyrights to that work is YOURS, not the contest’s. If the contest decides that you are ineligible after finding out this information, nine times out of ten, feel fortunate that you didn’t compete in their competition.
Feel leery of websites which post copyright information as follows at the bottom of their websites in small lettering.
Copyright 2005
My WebSite
All Rights Reserved
My Website may make references to
Another company’s Trademark
but is not affiliated with the other company’s trademark in any capacity. References to Their Trademark are provided solely as an informative and entertaining resource. No copyright infringement is intended nor implied.
I recently discovered the above-mentioned information when I was doing research prior to entering a very intensive state-wide competition held here in the North. The founder of the contest professed to be a millionaire with a legal team comparable to the best in the country. Unfortunately for this person, the images used for her contest were literally ripped off of a major brand name and well known name at that. If you see an image on another web site and use any portion of the color scheme, shape, lettering, effects, etc, ESPECIALLY when your product is similar in nature, be prepared for potential lawsuits. Be inventive and create your own ideas. As musicians, we should be creative entities, both in our verbiage and our ideals for pushing across ideas in image to our peers.
These are all just opinions but it's been my experience that all of these are important factors when compiling new music, and dealing with online entities in regards to anything of YOUR and not THEIRS.
I now open the floodgates for discussion.
)
~~Randy
(It's getting where you can't really trust what you're hearing on the news til it's been the same for a couple of days even.)