Who Form 5495 Copyright 2017-2025

My name is Michael Harrington. I'm a professor of music and intellectual property. I'm a musician. I've been a professional musician since I was 12. I fell into the world of copyright later on, and I work as an expert witness and consultant in cases involving music copyright. Copyright is something that's mysterious; most of us know little about it. You're not born knowing it; you're not born with an inclination to do it. You fall in love with music usually and then you start doing that, and later on, you set to learn something about law and business. So, you have a copyright from the moment you create something. It only needs to have two things: It needs to be original, which means it came out of your head, and it has to have some tiny bit of creativity. The Supreme Court called it a "modicum of creativity," so if you want to sound heavy and legal, you'd say a "modicum of creativity." So, it has to be original and has to be fixed in a tangible medium of expression, but by that, they mean sheet music, or you recorded it audio or video, or in an mp3 or mp4, something like that. So, that's what you need to have a copyright. There are a lot of myths about copyright. For example, people think you have to send your music to Washington DC. It has to be registered with the Copyright Office. That's a nice thing to do; there are benefits to registering your copyright, but it already is copyrighted from the moment of creation. So, all you have to do is: it has to be original, you didn't copy it, it has to be fixed, you have copyright right from the moment of creation. If you took 30 days...