Music Copyright Environment in the Uk

Copyright Environment

Introduction

  Intellectual property refers to the products of one’s creative efforts. The intellectual property laws aim to protect the proprietary ownership of intellectual property by the creator. The intellectual property laws can be categorized into various types such as patents, copyrights, trademarks and trade secrets (Ruther, 2016). Music is classified as a literal expression and therefore by protected by copyright. Copyright law protects the original expression of a song and therefore promote creativity. In the UK, the Designs and Patent Act 1988 gives the owners of literary works control over content sharing. The external agencies such as  The Phonographic Performance Ltd (PPL)  and Performing Rights Society(PRS) play a key role in the music industry. This paper, therefore, seeks to establish the role of key external agencies in the music industry and describe the function and importance of copyright laws in the music industry. Besides, this paper appraises the role of the external agencies in the music industry.

Intellectual Property Law and Music

Currently,the Designs and Patents Act of 1988 is the existing Copyright law in the UK.The Act offers guidelines to musicians and creative artists on the sharing of their materials.The Act also gives the musicians right to determine how their works may be copied,issued to third parties and how the music is used in TV and radio stations and in live performances (Bently & Sherman, 2014). For the law to give the musician’s work copyright protection, the musicans must verify that their work is original and shows a certain measure of hardwork from the musician.In the case of music,the copyright law requires that the work can only be made available to the public 70 years after the music’s author has passed on or in the case the work is made available to the public through third party authorization.

The Relationship Between Music Using Businesses and Collection Societies

Collection societies refer to the companies that collect the royalty contributions on behalf of the musicians or artists. Due to the complexity of the copyright law and the time it takes to streamline the copyright issues, the artists are usually unwilling to dedicate their time towards these activities since most of the musicians choose to concentrate on their music career (Ruther, 2016). Hence, the musicians contract the collection societies so that these societies can give third party license to the businesses that are using music in their daily operations. The collection societies work out terms of third party licensing on behalf of the musician (Towse, 2016). Therefore, the music-using businesses deal with the collection societies regarding the licensing of an individual musicians work since collection society is the official representative of the musician.