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Section 2

Section 2 of U.S. Copyright Form SR is where you name yourself and anyone who worked with you as a creator of your work. We’re dealing with the U.S. government here so always use your government name, NOT your stage name or nickname. If you ever have to go to court you want there to be no doubt that you are the person you say you are. So under letter ‘a’ write your full birth name.

Directly under that is a question. “Was this contribution to the work a “work made for hire”?” You will almost always check ‘NO’. If you check ‘YES’ that means that someone else has the right to claim the copyright. You do not want that, so always mark ‘NO’.

Next is AUTHOR’S NATIONALITY OR DOMICILE. If you are a U.S. citizen write U.S.A. You are a U.S. citizen if you were born in the United States or at some point became a U.S. citizen. If you are a citizen of another country, write it in.

Because you are still alive, under DATES OF BIRTH AND DEATH write the year you were born only.

Under WAS THIS AUTHOR’S CONTRIBUTION TO THIS WORK you want to check ‘NO’ to both questions. Anonymous means you don’t want credit (and why would you be filling this out if you didn’t want credit?) and Pseudonymous means that you go by another name (and I already told you to only use your government name).

Ok, now the line marked NATURE OF AUTHORSHIP is where you have a chance to do some different things with your copyright form. It says, “briefly describe nature of material created by this author which copyright is claimed”. If you are copyrighting your lyrics only you can just write, “lyrics only” and be done. If you created both the music AND the lyrics you can write “lyrics and music” or, if you are just copyrighting music you can write, “music only”.

Now what if you are the lyric writer and your friend is the music writer? That is where letters ‘b‘ and ‘c’ come in. You can both use the same copyright form and save yourselves a little cash. You, the lyricist, would fill out section ‘a’ as I described above and under NATURE OF AUTHORSHIP you would write, “lyrics”. Your friend would fill out section ‘b’ and under NATURE OF AUTHORSHIP write ‘music.’

Now what if you had several music writers on your album but you are the only lyricist? In that case you would probably just want to copyright your lyrics and your music writers should copyright their music separately. Remember, we want this to be as clear as possible for the government so if you are working with only one exclusive music writer or lyricist then you both can use the same form. If you are working with several, it’s best to keep it separate. If you have a band or a group that always works together and all of you contribute about the same to every track or project, then you all can use one copyright form. There is a form called Form CON which stands for Continuation where it provides you with a letter ‘d’ ‘e’ and ‘f’ so you can easily put up to six people down as copyright claimants. Further, you can fill out as many Form CON’s as you want.

Tune in tomorrow for Sections 3, 4, and 5!

Hans Erik
Content Marketing Director
Hans@Next2Friends.com
www.next2friends.com