In this video, we'll discuss the six exclusive rights of the copyright law in depth.
How they help you, why they are important.
The first right is the right to copy a work.
So, that means make a copy.
You can think of copying machine,
you can think of an MP3 and just what computers are best set up to do.
The second one is the right to make a derivative work.
Derivative means derived from.
It's a work based on something you already did.
The third of the exclusive rights is the right to distribute your work to the public,
and by that is meant to sell it,
to rent it, to lease it, to give it.
Another right is the right to perform your work in public.
That means only you can perform it in public unless you make
an agreement and let someone issue them a license to perform your work.
There are organizations that do that.
The next one, the fifth right,
is the right to display your work in public.
Which might sound unusual,
how do you display music?
The way you display music is to display lyrics.
For example put them on a greeting card or on clothing,
something like that that's the right to display music.
The sixth right is the newest one,
and it applies to one very specific item.
It applies only to a digital audio recording.
It says that you have the right to exclude anyone from
broadcasting that recording from streaming it and that's why you saw the Beatles,
Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Taylor Swift,
a lot of people were not quick to have their music stream to be allowed.
They had the right to that.
The right to exclude it till they had the right conditions.
So, to get into these rights a little more,
first right is again the right to make a copy and that's kind of simple it's obvious.
The second right though is the most fascinating of them all, it's a derivative.
The right to make a derivative by that is meant,
say you wrote a song and the lyrics and the music just affected people
in such a nice way that maybe someone
wants to make a movie out of it, how strange is that?
I mean could you turn a song into a movie.
If you wrote the song,
then you have the right to say yes, okay.
Yeah, let's make a movie out of it and
not only one movie let's make two or three or four movies.
One of my favorite examples of a derivative work is taking a song and repurposing it,
doing something else with it.
There's a famous song from the 70s called, The gambler,
written by Don Schlitz recorded by Kenny Rogers.
It was such a big hidden tells
an interesting story that there was interest in making it into a movie.
The person who gets to say yes or no you can make a movie from it is the songwriter.
It was one person who wrote the words and music, Don Schlitz.
So, Don get to say yeah, okay,
I'll agree and you can have extensive term you can control it in any way you want.
There was one movie made of it and that was successful,
they made in making five made-for-TV movies from his one song.
That is a long way to go.
That's taking one song and turning it into five movies.
That's the power of a derivative work that it could be repurposed like that.
Someone could write another work and he could have it done by a symphony orchestra,
a rearrangement of it,
think of what high school bands could do with it and college bands and so forth.
So, a lot can come out of a derivative work.
It's one of the most powerful.
The third exclusive right is the right to distribute your work to the public.
By that you can decide to sell your work,
sell your work for a certain amount of time,
license it to someone else to sell,
it could be set up as rental.
For example in Broadway and some other music often when orchestras get the music,
the score, the parts they need to perform it,
they have to rent it.
So, they're not going to own it and every time it gets performed, it's through rental.
Fourth exclusive right is the right to perform your work publicly.
Most of the time what any songwriter wants is to have her work,
his work performed publicly.
You don't want to put restrictions on it you want to be paid for
it and this is where performance rights organizations come in as well.
When your song is played in public,
you are paid for that,
there are various ways that that can be worked out.
But the right to perform it means if you don't want it performed,
you can have it prevented.
Normally speaking, that's a simple right.
You just get it performed the way you want it to be performed.
In the performance right,
the right to perform your work publicly,
there have been issues that have arisen when for example
certain politicians use music of
a recording artist when they are in a campaign appearance.
Say for example, I remember Ronald Reagan in the 80s running for
president and he liked the music of Bruce Springsteen.
I think one of the songs was, Born In The USA,
and he wanted to use that.
Springsteen didn't want him to but Springsteen had an agreement that
his music could be played in public if the venue had paid the performance fees,
the licensing fees and in this case they had.
So, in Ronald Reagan's campaign event in an auditorium of some public venue,
if the venue had paid the performance fees and that was all done correctly,
he was free to play Bruce Springsteen.
However, what most politicians will do will realize, okay,
Springsteen gave up part of his right like I do have the right to play
Bruce Springsteen's music Reagan could think but
if the performer is famous and doesn't want me to,
then I shouldn't and that's what happened.
There had been a lot of issues with that.
There can be issues where if a politician always want to use a song,
the politician could not use it in a recording that the politician featured and plays.
If he does commercials for himself and plays your music,
that's just another right of yours he's infringed upon.
As a onetime thing in a live venue,
then that's okay if the fee has been paid by the venue.
But to use it as campaign advertising,
then that's getting into more rights where the songwriter has the right to say no.
The fifth of the exclusive rights is the right to display your work publicly.
If you're a visual artist,
this is a really big deal.
If you're doing a painting,
then you have the right to display it publicly,
we think of visual ads as being displayed.
We think of songs as being played not displayed.
But music can be displayed as the lyrics in print.
You might want to display your lyrics,
you might want to put them on clothing
or embroidery or all kinds of places you might want to do that.
So, if someone comes along who is very skilled and does nice work with metal
and taking someone's lyrics and placing them
into a nice copper mug from Moscow or Mule kind of thing,
you don't have the right to do that because you're taking someone else's lyrics.
Even though you might have done this great art work or this craft work with metal,
you're using someone else's lyrics.
You are displaying someone else's lyrics.
That's where the display right with music it
usually involves something with that part of a song.
It has to be something visual.
When it comes to display,
I've seen legal issues where the copyright owners went after different artists,
visual artists to use Etsy and you'll see this on T-shirts a lot.
People will be selling T-shirts with lyrics from Nirvana, from the Beatles,
from the Dons and they'll be taking those lyrics and making
beautiful designs and then putting on on T-shirts and selling them.
The people who own the copyright to the lyrics almost always
send cease and desist or they go into business with them.
That's something the Grateful Dead would do,
if the Dead found someone we're doing something like that,
their approach was "Oh that's nice let's make this work together" but
that's the copyright owners right to say stop doing it
to prevent them a cease and desist or but you
should be creative I think that's a better approach and work with the people.
The Grateful Dead were the best at that.
In fact they even used some works and
some ideas that fans had done and created more trademarks based on that.
The sixth right, is the newest, it's from 1995,
it's the right to say you can prevent your recording from being streamed.
Which means digital, audio transmission, it means Internet,
satellite radio or anything that's digital transmission of your recording,
you can prevent that from happening.
The reason you might want to do it what
the Beatles the way they felt and the Rolling Stones,
it stemmed from first fear of the new and how do we control it.
They didn't understand because the music industry was based for decades on selling goods,
selling items and maybe performances on AM and FM paid a certain amount.
But with digital, the the amount of money to be paid was going to be a lot less.
They thought, until they had a good deal on what
they would be paid for digital audio transmission, they didn't want to do it.
It had to be worked out and Taylor Swift is
a person who was at the forefront of this of saying,
"I'm not going to allow it until it's done my way",
and she has that right because of the sixth right.
To repeat, they are six rights.
They are very important.
It's the federal government backing you as a copyright owner.
First right is right to make a copy,
you can prevent anyone from copying your music.
The second is to make a derivative,
you can make a derivative in
all kinds of things and you can prevent anyone else from doing it.
The right to offer your music,
distribute it, sell it,
rent it, lend it,
to the public, that's the third right.
The fourth right is the right to perform it publicly.
So, it has to be the way you want it to work,
so you have the right to say yes or no into how it should be performed.
The fifth right is the right to display,
which usually means as I said lyrics or some visual representation of the music.
The new sixth exclusive right is
the right to prevent anyone from doing a digital audio transmission.
So, those are the six exclusive rights for copyright owners.