Copyright Information

To find out who owns the copyright of a work or of any copyrighted item can be really grueling work. Some CDs and movies have the copyright owners printed on the disc, in the booklet, on the sleeve and such, but if you don't have any of those, but would like to use the music, or a photograph, finding the owner of the copyright can be a task without end. For instance, you would like to use in your article about the famous painting by Da Vinci, the Mona Lisa, a picture of the painting, to illustrate your piece. The actual Mona Lisa would be public domain, and if you are in Paris, perhaps you could manage to either photograph the picture yourself, although such actions are not permitted anymore, but who can forbid you snapping a fast one with your handy. But if you are in the USA and don't want to travel to Paris to visit the Louvre in order to sneak a pic, you may want to use a stock photo. You cruise the Internet, or do a picture search with Google or Yahoo, and you receive dozens of photos as a result. There is one particular photo that you like, but since that your written piece is being released in a magazine, you need a high quality, high resolution picture to give to your editor. Hopefully you have not seen an image that you think is just perfect and attempt to find just the exact same copy in high resolution. What you can do is contact a photo agency and pay for usage of one of the photos they offer, such photo agencies offer photos for just that use and are agents of photographers who own the copyright, or share the copyright with the agency and your problems are over. A piece of music may be something you want to use in your movie. You know the song, you know the interpreter, but you have no idea who owns the copyright. Buying the CD is one option, Internet another. The database of the US Copyright Office is searchable and may help you with this task. Besides that, the owner of a piece of music, if it's more or less contemporary, can be either the publishing company or the composer, usually it's a joint ownership, where you contact the publishing company in order to obtain the permission to use, or a so called sync license. ASCAP, which is a composer association, has a searchable database, where you can search by using the performers name and you receive the publisher and the direct contact right there. Other such performing rights societies have searchable databases as well, furthermore, if you know for which company the artist who recorded the song is working, then on the respective record company site you can find the responsible person in charge of issuing sync licenses.