How do I copyright protect an MP3 or WMA file?
To protect your copyrights on an MP3 or WMA file, you have a few different options depending on the level of copyright protection you desire. Depending on where you live, you may choose to register your work with your national copyright office or with a private registry. The first critical step to protect your copyrights is to credibly date-stamp your songs as soon as possible, and especially before you post them to the Internet or begin distributing them.
Depending on whether you own the song copyrights, or the master rights, or both, of the MP3 or WMA file in question, your work will be classified as a "Performing Arts" work or a "Sound Recording" by the US Library of Congress.
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SEAL™ files allow you to securely and redundantly archive your MP3 or WMA file's copyrights online instantly! Real-time international copyright protection! Learn how |
The US Library of Congress defines "Performing Arts" as follows: |
Performing arts works are intended to be “performed” directly before an audience or indirectly “by means of any device or process.” |
(1) musical works, including any accompanying words;
(2) dramatic works, such as scripts, including any accompanying music;
(3) pantomimes and choreographic works; and
(4) motion pictures and other audiovisual works.
For further definition of these examples
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The US Library of Congress defines "Sound Recordings" as follows: |
Make sure your work is a sound recording. Sound recordings are “works that result from the fixation of a series of musical, spoken, or other sounds, but not including the sounds accompanying a motion picture or other audiovisual work.” Common examples include recordings of music, drama, or lectures | Copyright in a sound recording protects the particular series of sounds that are “fixed” (embodied in a recording) against unauthorized reproduction and revision, unauthorized distribution of phonorecords containing those sounds, and certain unauthorized performances by means of a digital audio transmission. The Digital Performance Right in Sound Recordings Act of 1995, P.L. 104-39, effective February 1, 1996, created a new limited performance right for certain digital transmissions of sound recordings.
Generally, copyright protection extends to two elements in a sound recording: (1) the performance and (2) the production or engineering of the sound recording.
Please Note: In order to register a claim in a sound recording, the description of authorship in space 2 of the Form SR application must include the term “sound recording,” “performance,” or “production.”
A sound recording is not the same as a phonorecord. A phonorecord is the physical object in which works of authorship are embodied. The word “phonorecord” includes cassette tapes, CDs, LPs, 45 r.p.m. disks, as well as other formats.
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| For a full listing of the US Copyrights Classifications please visit our Copyright FAQ's Page. |
Why do I need to protect or register the copyrights?
Problems can arise if you are required to provide credible evidence of when you first created your copyrights... While in theory, any MP3 or WMA file has copyrights the instant it is committed to a reproducible format, in this Internet age, we highly recommend that date-stamping your creations becomes the second thing that you do. The sooner you can produce credible evidence of your copyright ownership of your MP3 or WMA files, the better off you will be. Read more
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Here at WorldWideOCR, we provide online services to internationally copyright protect MP3 or WMA files instantly for songwriters, lyricists and musicians, as well as creators of any other type of intellectual property. While the service has a 20 MB file size maximum, the process can handle any digital file format, and is not restricted to MP3 or WMA files.
Although you can make SEAL™ files from WAV or AIF files, these file formats often exceed the 20 MB file size maximum. If you intend to copyright protect songs from your CD-player formatted disc (WAV or AIF Files), you will need to compress the WAV or AIF files into MP3 or WMA files. This can be achieved through the Options panel of most Media players. For more information please see our faq's.
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