i am in Sacreligion and we had to boot our guitarist due to personal reasons. now that he is out of the band, he is attempting to copyright our music so that we cant have it. how do i go about combating this before its too late? any advice will help.

mail yourself the master copies of everything youve recorded and dont open the envelope

oh yea and make sure that its dated

did he write all the music or did he just help write it? that's the first big question.

I'm not the best with copyright law, but unless he can prove, without a shadow of a doubt, that he wrote ALL of the music then I don't think he will be able to copyright it.

Best of luck with this situation, it's pretty low that someone would pull a stunt like that just to get back at you guys.

write new songs start fresh

Christraper said:

That dosen't hold up all that well in court (if it comes to that) It used to, but since he'd be mailing it to himself now, it may not hold up either, because they'd be doing it after the fact that the guitarist was trying to copyright everything already...

my other thing, is copyrighting is exceptionally expensive, does he have enough cabbage to pull this off?

Thats why i thought it might work. I figured he might just be bluffing right now because copywriting shit is wicked expensive.

write new music, or he will drop it in about 2 weeks when he realizes how much it will cost him to take you to court, then laugh at him for not having a band anymore

2 words: Cage Match.

he asked the guy recording us for the master tracks(they're not even done and they're on the guys hard drive...and the douche's mom threatened to take the guy to small claims court)

either way...he didn't get them...and he sure as hell didn't write all the music because i did(don't wanna sound like an arrogant asshole...but i did)

if i could get this kid to agree to a cage match i'd house him but he has a vagina and i'm pretty sure that it has sand in it

largefreakatzero said:

This is the only advice in this thread thus far to make any kind of sense, in legal terms.

SacreligionNLI said:

In addition to the cage match, you will need to rape the mom as well.

ill rape his mom

yeah he definitely didnt write anything except like 2 solos, mike basically wrote everything. i wrote my lyrics but otherwise the songs are wholly written by Mike. to everyone, thanks for the tips. hopefully this doesnt escalate to a legal matter.

can i still rape his mom?

im sure it will...he's a douche remember?

Christraper said:

i don't know if you'd really want to

thats ok. id do it just so i can say i raped his mother.

copyright all the songs as a collection, that way you only have to pay the 30 bucks or whatever it is once. that will protect you from small shit like this kid. the copyright is effective from the postmark on the envelope. they say 9 months to get it back but I got mine back in 1. oh ya remember to send it certified mail. goddamn have you people ever heard of entertainment lawyers??? fucking call one and see what they say. chances are you won't need to actually hire them until the matter escalates... and when that happens the lawyer will be all about getting paid so they'll probably take their earnings from what you sue the prick back for. and remember.... technically your music is copyright protected once it hits any form of media, whether it be CD, tape, or hard disk. but honestly go through the proper channels instead of asking people on a msg board cause chances are no one really knows for sure unless they've been involved in a very similar incident. go forth unto the real world friend, stop asking for so much advise on this board.

BTW: let his mom take him to claims court. she won't win. or... just drop his tracks on the recording and re-record them yourselves. problem solved.

was already going to re-record them(a lot of em sucked to begin with)

the reason why we ask you people is because there tend to be more honest people in a scene where the mainstream has no influence

honestly full of shit. whoever said copyrighting is expensive doesn't know jack... 30 bucks (or around that) per work is a small price to pay considering it protects you from infringement. like I said, if you want to really do it on the cheap, copyright it as a collection instead of each song individually... you only pay once. if you wanted to split it up later and use songs on compilations or release singles, then you would copyright just that specific song by itself. but, presumeably you are releasing it as something (if even a demo) so just do it as a collection and call it done. I do not recall the form # offhand but most legitimate studios (aka not the kid in his mom's basement with a computer and protools) will have a person who handles administrative/small time legal stuff like copyrights, just go find one of em and ask em to help you put the package together. these people can do all the legwork (read: paperwork) for you for as low as 100-200$, which is a pretty good price to ensure all the paperwork is legit (there's a lot of legal BS to read through and it's real boring and us musicians tend to skip that anyway). 200$ and sign your name and your shit's done. Good deal.

i have spoken to outside sources, i was just looking for all inputs on the situation. my friends sister ironically is studying music copyright laws so she is our backup.

what does a kid in his mom's basement with pro tools have to do with it? we went to an actual studio, but there is no legal type guy that works there. also, the songs aren't even finished yet, so what would happen if we copyrighted what we have but then add more to it...waste of money it seems...especially when matt's not giving out the master tracks to anyone until he hears from both sides

#1: if he got the money from you, he owes you the tracks
#2: I wasn't saying YOU recorded in someone's basement, I'm just saying a lot of people say "ya we were in the studio" and what they really mean is they have a friend with a laptop. just a means of distinguishing what would be called a real studio.
#3: if the songs are not finished you cannot copyright them. the most he could sue for would be getting his parts dropped from the recording. and also say he wrote a guitar part that your other player plays... well, then you have to work out some percentage of the overall song that he owns, and pay him royalties based off that. if it's a minor part like a chord change then whatever, let him sue you or whatever. any competant judge would throw that case right out. BTW you only have to figure out royalty % if you register with a legal body like ASCAP or BMI. Just pay your studio guy what you owe him and the tracks are yours, then forget your old guitar player and move on to playing music again. Good luck.

oh and BTW if he didn't sign anything then he has no case whatsoever.

well if he reads this site,this thread might not be helpful.

but he cant do shit unless he wrote all the music,worse case scenerio you might have to pay for parts he wrote,are just change them

well i asked him before all this if he wanted to keep some of his parts in and get credit for em and he said yes...but the next day he pulled this stunt

essentially he took out a loan to help pay for it and we're all supposed to pay him back...but instead of telling us how much we owe him(he moved out of our apartment and we got stiffed with a $2300 rent bill cuz he never gave the landlord money we gave him or gave any of his own...which outweighs it insatiably) he did this...and nothing in the songs are his except for like two solos and a layer over destined to crawl

You have an intellectual copyright on anything you write the second you write it. If you can prove you wrote it, you own it. If he alone paid for the recordings, then he can make claim for those recordings, but not the written songs themselves.

john fogerty(formerly of creedence clearwater revival for anyone that dosent know who he is) when he went solo got sued by ccr cause he sounded too much like ccr > scary thing is THEY WON