Summary: If you can find a set of the lyrics in a very old publication then the lyrics are public domain. This is because govenments have a large incentive to let drugs become generic but no incentive to let artistic creations become available freely to the general public. By comparison, drugs which cost a great deal to create lose their copyright protection in 18 years. Now they are being extended to many years after author's death. When the copyright laws were first passed in the 18th century, copyrights only lasted less than a decade. It was a losing battle as both recording companies and songbook publishers have huge financial incentives to treat traditional songs as their own copyrighted material.įurthermore, music companies spend a lot of money lobbying Congress to make it harder and harder for songs to go into public domain. This drove Pete Seeger nuts and he worked to try and establish a 'Public Domain Foundation' that would return royalties for such songs to 'the people' (in the form of financial support for organizations that were providing support for traditional musicians). If you find the same song copyrighted by many different artists in an online song database, this usually means that the musical arrangement is copyrighted but the lyrics may not be. John or Alan Lomax) or by musicians recorded them or copyrighted their own adaptation of tradional lyrics. On the other hand, 'traditional' songs are often copyrighted by the person who collected them (e.g. in the 19th century) are probably now in the public domain. As a rule of thumb, songs that were officially published more than a century ago (e.g. It is difficult to prove that a song is in the public domain unless it was previously copyrighted and the copyright expired. The actual arrangement & layout of the songs in the public domain is owned by the songbook publisher.

In this case you are welcome to record these songs or reprint the lyrics freely as you long as you do not simply copy the songs out of the book. Songs in the public domain are indicated in Rise Again by a simple notice saying 'Arr (c) 2015 Hal Leonard Corp.' In Rise Up Singing there is no copyright notice under such songs.

Work from home song lyrics are stupid