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Coursera Songwriting Course With Pat Pattison


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I just signed up for the Songwriting Course on Coursera.com as a free course offering from Berklee School of Music.

 

The course obviously requires that we pen lyrics each week, so my concern is about writing and "publishing" lyrics without having time to copyright them.

 

Anyone have any information on how I can protect my work while participating in this group?

 

 

 

 

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Don't publish anything worth stealing and don't share anything worth stealing. Lock it all away in a safe secure place where the world will never find it.

 

When you put something on the market for public display it becomes public domain regardless of how well you try to protect your copyrights/publising rights.   You'll need an army of lawyers and two of surfers to find the material then try to prosecute the offenders.  Trust me I'm in the software biz  people claim to have our stuff for free all the time.  Sometimes it's acting out and sometimes it's not.  If we weren't in the software biz to make money we could easily simply not produce anything or share anything but that's not how a software writer or a music writer makes money.

 

As for general copyright/publishing rights thing.  If you feel it's worthy of writing then you should also publish.

Upload your content to a blog.  That way you have your rights in tact and have a verifiable datestamp as to when you wrote it.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Don't write anything worth stealing.

 

That kind of defeats the purpose of trying to excel in a songwriting course.  Thanks for the reply, but I'll have to find some other solution.

 

As for general copyright/publishing rights thing.  If you feel it's worthy of writing then you should also publish.

Upload your content to a blog.  That way you have your rights in tact and have a verifiable datestamp as to when you wrote it.  

 

So are you saying that by simply creating a blog and posting the lyrics on there prior to posting them in the class, I will be protected?

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If someone steals your lyrics just be happy someones hearing them in my opinion why care about stupid stuff like copyright if you know yourself someone stole your lyrics and is making a fortune off it then be happy knowing u produced something great.

John Lennon said it best "Money can't buy me love"

How ironic. Lennon and the other Beatles suffered from poor publishing decisions for many years, theirs is one of the most famous copyright cases in history. Do your research before you spout, dude. Also, I'm pretty sure 'Can't Buy Me Love' is a McCartney write and the prefix Money is from the aphorism 'Money can't buy you love' which doesn't appear in any Beatles/Lennon song.

Seize the day, carpedm, and check out the many intelligent discussions on Songstuff about this important issue.

Edited by chased
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a blog wouldnt hold up in court but if you registered mailed yourself something it always would and I don't think that the Beatles really cared about anything more than making music I doubt they gave a f*ck about bad publishing decisions or not even if they made them it was probably cause they just wanted it out their, jimi hendrix was the same way, along with most of the great artists of this century. Who gives a f*ck about song stealing if you can make one you can make another no big deal. If your that protective over your stuff its probably not that good anyways if it was u couldnt help yourself but share it just my opinion


Actually, the "envelope mailed to self" thing has proved NOT to hold up in court when it's been tried. A blog, at least if published on one of the major sites, has the advantage of being time/date stamped by a disinterested 3rd party. Additionally, in your blog you can comment on your thought process about writing the lyric, inspiration, and maybe even discuss the same with others, which would be a big factor in proving ownership, if you should have to do so in court.

Edit: I should say has proved not to work in the US... the UK is more equivocal...
http://www.snopes.com/legal/postmark.asp
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FWIW, Canadian law probably more closely resembles UK law, so we may both be correct. However, if you think thru ways to cheat the "poor man's copyright" you'll see how easily it can be done, which in turn reveals how easily doubt could be cast upon it in court. So, I think the practical value is limited even in the best case.

 

Google "poor man's copyright". A lot of info on the subject. The snopes article was the first or second link, and their info is usually pretty good.

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