In any country, copyright law plays a crucial role in the evolution and growth of the music industry. All forms of music work is intellectual property (IP) with potential economic value. But, can intellectual property rights be limited to just preserving one’s creations and compositions? As time passes, every industry is faced with a new set of challenges. The music industry in Canada, too, has been sailing through obstacles such as broadcasting issues, funding issues, and copyright issues. The main focus of this article is to draw light on the copyright aspect of the intellectual property law in Canada, and its benefits to the music industry.
Provides Protection
The primary function of any copyright is to protect your intellectual property from being used without your consent. A copyright means the ‘right to copy’. It gives you the sole right to produce or reproduce a work or a substantial part of it in any form. A copyright covers a wide area of things such as musical compositions, literary works, and performances. A copyright is also applicable to performers’ performances, sound recordings and communication signals. The copyright of a sound recording would give the composer the sole right to publish the sound recording for the first time, to reproduce it in any material form, to rent it out and to authorize any of these activities by a third party.
In the case of songwriters, there are two types of rights that can be benefited from – copyright and moral rights. The copyright will give you the right to derive economic value from work. On the other hand, moral rights are personal and gives you the right to prevent distortion, mutilation, or other modification of your work, or its use in association with a product, service, cause or institution to the prejudice of the honor or reputation of the author.
Enables Publishing of Your Work
Another key benefit of the intellectual property law in Canada is that you get to produce and reproduce the copyrighted work legally. And as mentioned above, you also get to prevent most contortions to your work.
Copyright Collective in Canada (CCC)
This is the organization that collects and distributes royalties paid by retransmitters of television programs in Canada. The Copyright Collective of Canada is a not-for-profit organization. It is a platform for collective rights management. The collective sharing of rights help foster the economic growth of various players in the same industry (music).
SOCAN
The Society of Composers, Authors, and Music Publishers of Canada (SOCAN) is a Canadian organization that represents the performing rights of nearly 135,000 songwriters, music publishers, and composers. It is a not-for-profit organization and represents the performance rights of countless music artists. It provides a licensing system that makes it easy for outsiders to legally use their compositions. In a way, it resembles the idea of a patent or a copyright collective, but in this case, it is exclusive to the music industry.
These were some of the ways in which the copyright law in Canada is benefiting the music industry. Have you been facing copyright issues with your music? Connect with our intellectual property professionals today.