In my humble opinion, having researched copyright issues for various
reasons over the past ten years, you should forget about registration
issues and concentrate on trying to create something worth stealing.

If you were to register every song you think might get stolen, you might
spend thousands, only to eventually realize that the problem is not
guarding your work, but getting it out there, and getting it heard.

Popular music is not like alchemy or roulette. The Beatles didn't hit a
lucky combination of notes. They worked very, very hard, and it was the
combination of their hard work, their talents, their personalities, and
the active promotion of Brian Epstein that eventually led to the
creation of songs worth stealing. By that time, I doubt they were very
concerned about protecting their melodies, although I'm sure George's
professional pride took a beating after the "My Sweet Lord" lawsuit.

In any case, any songs that they might have registered before they were
successful would have been almost completely irrelevant to them at that
point.

In any case, the odds that someone might hear your song on a web site,
and not having every heard of you, and not having ever heard the song,
and having the means to present a new version of it, and the inclination
to steal it, along with the talent to create a viable new performance of
it, etc., etc.... it's just too far out there to really be worth this
much concern.

Odds are, you might never have a melody stolen... but your agent,
manager, lawyer, and record company will have picked you clean by then
anyway.

Good luck.


Jon J. Yeager wrote:
"Mike Rivers" wrote in message

Are you referring to the $30-per-song registration at
www.copyright.gov/forms as suggested by Irene, which store a physical copy
of your song and lyrics?

Or the "registration of name" only that exists in Canada (which doesn't
store anything but the title, and hence I wonder what good that is at the
end of the day).