Showing posts with label Copyright Registration Online. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Copyright Registration Online. Show all posts

Thursday, 19 March 2020

Effective Ways of Avoiding Copyright Issues in Music Production


copyright registration

Without any second thoughts, getting into the music industry can nowadays prove to be quite brutal. Initially, you don’t think much about it by enjoying the phase and experiencing your dream job. You spend your time recording, producing, selling music, and getting paid for the same as well. However, after some time, you get to see the ugly face and harsh reality of the music industry, which indeed has cutthroat competition and a lot of mean people looking forward to claiming that you stole their tunes. Copyright Infringement lawsuits, in the present fast-paced society, are something that most of the music producers are accustomed to dealing with, but that doesn’t make them any uncomplicated to handle. Therefore, it is always highly advisable to avoid such complications as much as possible and as soon as possible. Let us now make ourselves familiar with how you can do the same proactively.
1.     Get all the Necessary Permissions
While being in the music industry, if you are looking forward to using the creative work of another person, then the first and foremost thing you need to do is get all the necessary permissions. It is a matter of fact that yes – the music industry is vast with a lot of artists and producers. At times you may think that you will not get caught; however, there’s no way out, and you will eventually end up getting caught, mostly in cases if you sell your music recordings. You might wake up one morning and see yourself hit by a copyright infringement lawsuit only because you didn’t receive permission from the concerned parties in the matter. Furthermore, the same applies to dead artists too. A lot of people across the globe are of the view that if a music artist is no more, then his or her creative works are open for use, which is undoubtedly far away from the truth.
The reality is that the families of the music artists who are no more and other concerned parties can still make a lot of money from royalties. Also, just because the artists are dead doesn’t mean their works are available for free. Therefore, make sure you have yourself covered in all aspects corresponding to having all the necessary permissions.
2.     Don’t Swindle the Music Tunes
There are indeed some music producers and artists who swindle the tunes from others and claim it as their own, which is a clear cut way of getting hit with a copyright infringement lawsuit. Without any doubt, you can go ahead with getting ideas from other music artists; however, you can’t take their music straight away and use it directly. There are various platforms on the Internet today that offer royalty-free sounds, loops, and sample packs to music producers. You can effectively make the most out of such opportunities by acquiring everything from the rightful owners and consequently avoid all copyright-related issues in the long run.
3.     Get in touch with a Specialized Copyright Attorney
If you wish to use a specific part of another person’s music, then it is always a brilliant idea to seek legal advice and assistance first. Copyright Laws are comprehensive with plenty of intricate details that you will miss if you begin understanding them yourself. So, get in touch with a specialized Copyright Attorney and understand whether what you are doing is legal or not. Also, under copyright laws and regulations, using some part of a music tune or song for non-commercial purposes doesn’t necessarily make it ‘fair use.’ Fair use doesn’t hold the need to seek permission from the copyright owner. However, there is a need to ensure that your case is under fair use, which again takes us to the utmost importance of consulting with experienced attorneys first.
4.     Have an Understanding about Copyrights
The copyright laws may prove to be too technical and complicated for you to understand, but you can focus on understanding the term copyright in general. When we come to the music industry, there are various misconceptions and misunderstandings related to copyright and related terms. Hence, it is imperative to know about the right things and avoid all unexpected damages. For instance, in the music industry, copyright laws not only extend to music but also the lyrics, which is something not many people know. If you use a paragraph from a poem or a book, the descendants of the writer might sue you alleging copyright infringement and demand some money if you had neglected to ask for permission. Even uploading a track (not for commercial purposes) with copyright infringement on your social media accounts like Facebook and Instagram may bring in trouble. You need to keep in mind all such details for avoiding copyright-related issues. It is highly advisable to prepare yourself for every possibility, understand the term copyright thoroughly, and know what you are allowed to do. For more visit: https://www.trademarkmaldives.com


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Wednesday, 29 January 2020

Tech Industry Urges SCOTUS To Reverse Verdict In Google V. Oracle Copyright Battle


copyright registration

A group of technology organizations and companies have recently come forth with support for Google in its Copyright Infringement battle against Oracle. The group, including Mozilla, Medium, Reddit, Cloudera, along with others, filed a joint “friend of the court” brief in which they urged the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) to reverse a Federal Circuit Court’s verdict that Google infringed on Oracle’s copyright to Java API code in its Android Operating system.
The Google v. Oracle fight dates back over a decade, with a core concern being whether Copyright Laws bar the common practice of software reimplementation, the process of developing new software to carry out certain functions of a legacy product. However, with the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit decision stating that the functional elements of application programming interfaces (APIs) are subject to copyright, Oracle won the most recent iteration of the fight.
The brief stated that ‘innovation and competition’ is the engine of the healthy internet, and software development is the field that fuels it. For the past many years, the software engineers have been relied on reimplementation, emphasizing reuse of functional protocols like the software interfaces to create competitive alternatives to incumbent industry players and develop new software without fear of copyright infringement.
The companies argued that the federal court’s decision against Google stifled decades of industry practice and upended the established expectations of developers, investors, and consumers. They urged the SCOTUS to reverse the lower court’s finding and allow Java APIs to be free from copyright or at least be accessible for fair use.
Abigail Phillips, head of the Mozilla Foundation’s legal department, said that the brief made its argument from the perspective of not just small and medium companies but even open-source tech organizations. She wrote that the consequences of the Court’s ruling in favor of Oracle are especially dire for small software developers who are already suffering due to their size and relatively limited resources. Hence, the overall result will be worst, i.e., the future would see fewer innovations from small and medium companies, along with the reinforcement of the positions of large enterprises in the tech industry. The future, as a result of this decision, would also experience a decline in incentive among big companies to improve their products and services.
At last, the brief stated – the tech industry believes that a healthy internet relies on the Supreme Court (SC) reversing the Federal Circuit Court’s decision and reaffirming the current status of play for software development, where copyright doesn’t stand in the path of software developers reusing SSOs (structure, sequence, and organization) for API packages in socially, technologically, and economically beneficial ways.
Besides this recently filed brief, an application requesting SCOTUS to reconsider the earlier judgment of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit had been filed by Google as well. However, the final showdown amid Google and Oracle is set to take place in March. For more visit: https://www.trademarkmaldives.com

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Thursday, 2 January 2020

Kanye West Seeks To Fight Against Ultralight Beam Copyright Lawsuit


copyright registration process

Rapper Kanye West and Universal Music are seeking to battle against the copyright lawsuit filed earlier this year over the use of a clip at the start of his 2016 track ‘Ultralight Beam’.
According to an Instagram video, this song that was recorded for West’s album titled ‘The Life of Pablo’ includes the voice of a young girl in prayer. The video was uploaded by the girl’s mother in early 2016.
Sounds a bit interesting, West claimed that he received verbal approval to use the clip in his song from the child’s mother – Alice T Johnson. Nevertheless, in the Copyright Infringement lawsuit filed back in February, the girl’s adoptive parents – Andrew and Shirley Green, who adopted the girl in 2012 – argued that the agreement in connection with the use of the clip having girl’s voice had to be with them. It is because, at the time when the clip was recorded, Johnson was no longer legally the girl’s mother, and thus, didn’t possesses the authority to allow the girl’s voice to be used in the song.
The Greens further contended that even if Johnson provided approval, the lawsuit should continue as conversations amid her and West were only verbal. Meanwhile, Kanye neither finalized any written agreement with either Johnson or the Greens, nor he ever paid a fee for using the clip in his song.
To prevent the rapper from statutory or other relevant damages, his legal representatives have attempted to limit the copyright infringement lawsuit in several ways. Their response filed with the court deals with numerous elements of the case. For instance, firstly, West’s lawyers said that the Greens had not registered the original recording of the clip with the U.S. Copyright Office at the time when Ultralight Beam was recorded. Hence, they are not entitled to either attorney fees or statutory damages. Indeed, if the representatives succeed in arguing this, then there are possibilities that the damages owed to the Greens could reduce greatly.
Elsewhere West legal team seeks to remove an additional plaintiff, Andreia Green, from the lawsuit entirely. She is a relative of the child, and her adult voice, in addition to the girl, is also heard in the recording sampled by West. However, team West insisted that because Andreia Green is not listed as a co-owner of the recording in the Copyright Registration with the US Copyright Office, she has no standing in this case.
This is how West and his legal team responded so far in regard to the Ultralight Beam lawsuit. Nevertheless, for the final settlement, it now remains to be seen how the court and the Greens respond to West’s motion. For more visit: https://www.trademarkmaldives.com

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Tuesday, 3 December 2019

DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act): Everything You Need To Know


intellectual property right protection

Since the internet began, people have uploaded and published over a trillion gigabytes of digital content that includes music, games, movies, and much more. The rapid advancements in the digital age and the internet have undoubtedly served content creators and publishers with lots of opportunities to make profits and revenue but along with challenges such as violation of their data online. Indeed, Copyright Infringement is one of the biggest challenges that the digital world faces in the present era. To stop the continuous increase in widespread unlawful access to copyrighted materials observed in the 1990s, the US government put a step and came up with a law called the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Abbreviated as DMCA, this law is a result of the teamwork of legislators, media firms, and consumer lawyers, and enacted by the US Congress and signed by President Bill Clinton in 1998. The law was made on request of many organizations requested for a legal process by which holder of Copyright Website, content, or image could assert their rights to prevent the illegal use of their media. Apart from providing the copyright holders with these facilities, DMCA aims to maintain a balance between the interests of original owners and those who want to purchase the copyrighted materials. It also takes care of penalties to be put on offenders who intentionally violate any Intellectual Property (IP).
DMCA Takedown Notice
Resting as the main component of DMCA law, DMCA takedown notice is an official notification to inform the firm, search engine, web host, or internet service provider (ISP) that they are using copyrighted material. As, in the legal sense, such use is unlawful and leads to copyright infringement, the site or company who receives this notice should immediately take down the specific material. In case they avoid doing so, the ISP could forcefully remove the copyrighted content. You can send the DMCA notice or request for the following types of copyright content:
  • Videos,
  • Digital software,
  • Artwork, images, photos,
  • Posts on your official websites,
  • Songs, music, and almost every kind of audio files,
  • Written texts, including books, poetry, articles, blogs, etc.
Registration of Work Isn’t Necessary
When it comes to write or send a DMCA notice, it is not mandatory to register your work. Any unique content becomes its owner’s IP as soon as he/she creates it. And, as the original owner holds the copyright to it from the moment of its creation, he/she can send a DMCA notice in regards to it without bothering about Copyright Registration. DMCA takedown request is one of the politest ways to prevent infringement of any unregistered material, but don’t forget that if you want to go for a copyright infringement lawsuit, then it is essential to register your content with the copyright office.
Procedure to Create DMCA Notice
As per the law, there is no official DMCA takedown notice form or template that copyright owners are needed to use. However, to make the requests valid, each plaintiff (sender of the notice) must consider including certain specifications. Besides providing info that showcases the copyright infringement, the notice should include:
  • All the details related to the content that’s being infringed
  • A statement that the sender has a good faith that the party on the receiving end has infringed his/her content
  • A statement that under penalty of perjury, every detail provided in the takedown notice is precise
  • Sender’s contact information
  • Sender’s physical or electronic signature
Don’t Worry If You Receive a DMCA Takedown Notice
Considering the legal standing, receiving a DMCA takedown notice undoubtedly sounds a bit scary, but being worried or scared is not at all a solution. What you should do in such cases is first of all calm down and be honest to yourself. After that, think whether or not you infringed the copyrighted material intentionally. Usually, there are high possibilities that you didn’t steal or post the content intentionally. Nevertheless, if you find yourself guilty of infringing the material, then rectifying your mistake will be the best solution. Be quick to locate and take down the violated content as soon as you could. In some cases where you host multiple websites with various people posting and sharing content, there are probabilities that you receive the notice as the next logical person to contact while the infringement was committed by any of those people. Other likelihoods could be that you are using the copyrighted content cautiously within the boundaries of Fair Use. If that’s so, then contact the sender of the notice and share the details of how you used his/her content. It will help you in sorting the issue with ease.
Conclusion
Nowadays, when powerful tools like DMCA are here to help you fight back the infringers, there is no need to stand like helpless in situations when they steal or use your copyrighted content. When these tools have been designed to serve you, then why not utilize them and extract the benefits that you deserve. From today onwards, be active and understand the rights you hold over your copyrighted content and ways to utilize them in the best possible manner. In the case of any query, feel free to contact an experienced IP Attorney. You can also contact an Intellectual Property Law Firm with good experience in rendering services related to the IP industry. For more visit: https://www.trademarkmaldives.com

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Monday, 2 December 2019

HC Agrees To Hear Copyright Infringement Suit Against Bigil


Copyright Infringement

The Madras High Court (HC) has agreed to hear on 24th October 2019 a plea by a scriptwriter Amjath Meeran asking to restrain the release of the movie – Bigil on 25th October 2019 alleging that the movie’s writer-director Atlee infringed his copyright.
Advocate M.S. Murali, who requested Justice N. Sathish Kumar to take up this Copyright Infringement lawsuit for urgent hearing, asked lawyer P.V. Balasubramanian representing the production group/company AGS Entertainment Private Limited and executive producer Archana Kalpathi to be ready for arguments. Mr. Murali told the justice that he would convince the court to grant an interim injunction restricting the release of the movie on the set date. He added that even otherwise, the movie could be released after depositing Rs 10 lakh in the court as the compensation money asked by Mr. Meeran.
In the plaint, the plaintiff claimed himself to be a director, producer, and writer who owned a production company with a name Meeran Theatres. The complaint showed that he was also an associate member of TFPC (Tamil Film Producers Council). He also claimed to have written a script titled ‘Brasil’ in the year 2014 and then get it registered with the Writers Guild of America in 2015.
He said that though the guild was yet to issue a registration certificate, he had sent an email for despatching the certificate at the earliest. He stated that the script, which had been projected in the trailer of the movie Bigil, is the same as his script. Besides, it also spins around the theme of the football game being encouraged by the protagonist of the movie.
In the end, he urged the judge to appoint a team of scriptwriters and professionals from the film industry to compare the two scripts and provide a report to the court so that the director and his production team could be ordered to pay an initial compensation of Rs. 10 lakh.
Although the court’s final decision about the release of the movie is yet to come, it seems that actor Vijay starrer Bigil, along with, his team has run into trouble.
   For view source: https://bit.ly/2qfkKuW

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