Re: What's in public domain these days?
Originally Posted by
pops1
Remember if you are playing original music, but you made recording of it and copyrighted it, you are still under the copyright law of not being able to play your own music without the venue paying.
First, IANAL, but, you are not distinguishing between "copyright" and "copyright registration," the latter is the only thing that really matters. And you can even register the copyright of a work without submitting a sound recording. How you obtained a registered copyright is irrelevant to whether your own performance puts a place at risk. What matters is if you have *retained* the copyright by not distributing via some channel that takes a slice of the rights (this is important to understand), and have not, yourself, registered with a PRO (ASCAP, et al.) and put the song in their database/catalog (either as the writer or publisher). If you are the sole owner of the (registered) copyright, you can grant yourself the right to perform it for free anywhere you choose.
The business of "public domain," however does incur the pitfalls of registered copyrights of performances (SRs) that are so similar to yours that a claim can be made, and nobody has the lawyers like the publishing houses and PROs. I've had claims made against classical stuff because it was similar enough to a published arrangement someone had copyrighted, no matter it was originally written 300 years ago (plus or minus), and it was performed from reading the "urtext" (original published composition). I don't think you'll have that problem in your average pub, though.
2018 Kentucky KM-950, 2017 Ellis A5 Deluxe
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