USA Copyright Law for Musical Works

United States copyright law is found in Title 17 of the United States Code and is administered by the US Copyright Office. Legally a copyright means that a musician, author, or artist has a "limited duration monopoly" on anything he creates.  The US Constitution, Article 1, Section 8, grants the government power "to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries".   A work is automatically under copyright protection from the moment of creation, but to legally file for copyright infringement the copyright must be registered with the copyright office.  Registering a composition provides public notification of copyright and allows the copyright owner to demand damages and attorney's fees if his copyright is infringed. If you use a song under copyright protection without the owner's permission, you are opening yourself to possible legal action.

United States Copyright Duration for Musical Works

The current duration of copyright protection for published Musical Works in the USA as follows:

Works Published Before 1929	Maximum Copyright Protection of 95 years has Expired	Works are in the Public Domain
Works Published 1929 thru 1978	Maximum Copyright Protection of 95 Years from Year Published	Works Enter Public Domain on January 1 of 96th year after publication.
Works Published After 1978	Life of the Longest Surviving Author plus 70 years	Earliest Possible PD date is 1/1/2049

Detailed copyright term information can be found in Duration of Copyright, a U.S. Government publication. Remember that copyright laws define when a work IS UNDER copyright protection, not when a work is NOT UNDER copyright protection. So determining public domain status can be difficult to comprehend because the public domain exists in the absence of any possible copyright protection. Also refer to Copyright Basics, Circular 1 of the U.S. Copyright Office.  Other U.S. Government Circulars about copyright law are also available on the US Copyright Office website.

International Copyright Law

The Berne Convention is an international treaty standardizing copyright protection since 1886.  In 1994 a General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) was signed by 117 countries, and the World Trade Organization (WTO) was created in Geneva, Switzerland, to enforce compliance with the agreement.  GATT includes a section covering copyrights called the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPS). US law was amended to be essentially consistent with GATT by the Uruguay Round Agreements Act (URAA) in 1994 and the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act in 1998.  Despite GATT, copyright protection varies greatly from country to country, and extreme caution must be exercised on all  international usage of any intellectual property.

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