Course: Music Copyright: Understanding UK Copyright Law When Working with Music

When you want to use a work that is in copyright, usually you need to get permission from all copyright owners. Some works have several rights attached to them and …

What motivates people to create music? What does copyright mean to musicians? Do they use other people’s work? And how do they feel about others using their own music? Where …

This video explores the use of public domain and licensed copyright materials as inputs to commercial innovation. Interviews with successful UK media firms reveal how the availability of certain expressions, …

Copyright does not last forever. In the UK, and across Europe, copyright in books, plays, music, works of art and films comes to an end 70 years after the author’s …

There are many things that copyright does not protect. It does not protect information or facts, principles, concepts or ideas. This is often referred to as the idea-expression dichotomy. That …

Tina and Ben are faced with numerous decisions about how best to reach an audience and make money from the copyright in their song but they are unsure which route …

According to copyright law, permission is required whenever songs and recordings are copied, communicated to an audience or performed in public, unless the use is covered by a copyright exception. …

Tina and Ben are not the only ones who have to sort out copyright – so do the makers of the video Going for a Song! Aside from lyrics and …

Having written their song and performed at the open-mic, Tina and Ben want to find a wider audience for it and they also hope to make some money out of …

By recording their song Tina and Ben satisfy the ‘fixation’ requirement and their original song will be protected by copyright. But when they record their song they also create a …

A song is the combination of melody and words. Each is protected by copyright: the melody as a musical work and the lyrics as a literary work. One or the …

Tina and Ben both own the song in a sense because each has contributed to its creation. However, each owns a different element of the song: Tina wrote the tune, …

If you own the copyright in a work, you are free to exploit it on your own or license the use of it to another party (such as a book …

In recent decades, a number of alternative copyright schemes have emerged to address perceived shortcomings in the traditional copyright system. Creative Commons (CC) is one such scheme, intended to ameliorate …