Music copyright

Re: Music copyright

Where does this songwriter live and when was the song written?

Re: Music copyright


Take your pick Joe from New York 1960

or Britain 1960

isn't there a kind of worldwide standard thing for this??

Re: Music copyright

Most countries adhere to the Berne Convention, which sets up a standard minimum term for copyright protection. The convention sets the minimum copyright duration at the life of the author plus fifty years; i.e. a copyright starts at the time the work is created and expires fifty years after the author's death. The US became a party to the convention in 1989.

Prior to 1989, the US had a rather complicated regime of copyright laws. Initially, copyrights had to be registered for an initial 28-year term, with the option of a 28-year renewal period. This changed in 1976, where the US adopted a life-plus-fifty years term for literary works (including songs) created after 1976 and extended the copyright for works that were still under copyright under the old act by 19 years. Then, to make matters more confusing, the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998 (aka the "Mickey Mouse Protection Act") effectively added twenty years to the terms of all works still under copyright that had been created after January 1, 1923.

British copyright law is also rather complicated. It appears that the UK was originally life-plus-fifty, but then went to life-plus-seventy:

Prior to 1 January 1996, the UK's general copyright term was life of the author plus 50 years. The extension to life of the author plus 70 years was made due to an EU directive. It contained a controversial provision which meant that certain copyrights were revived: material that had been in the public domain came back into copyright. The normal practice of British law would have been to freeze the extension of the public domain, rather than reviving copyright. Such retrospective laws are very rarely enacted.

I'd assume, therefore, that the minimum copyright term for a British song published in 1960 is at least life-plus-fifty years.

So, what does this all mean? It means that any song copyrighted in the US in 1960 will not pass into the public domain until 2055. As for a song copyrighted in the UK in 1960, you can assume that it will remain under copyright for as long as the songwriter lives and for 50 years thereafter.

Thank you very much Joe, the reason I asked this question is that just lately there have been several tunes from the 1960's used in T.V. commercials here in Britain and I wondered if the copyright was up.

Perhaps the songwriters are a bit short of cash and selling out to the advertising world.

Thank you again for a very full answer.