Copyright Law?
So last night I had an idea for a children's book, and I have a question about copyrights. For the last year I have been trying to remember the lyrics to a children's song that I learned when I was in elementary school. I can only remember the first verse, and fragments of verses two & three (it is a counting song and has 10 verses total). I remember nothing of verses 4-10. I want to write it as a book, and make up verses 4-10 myself. I have searched on line for the song, I've asked my friends who tend to know ever children's song under the sun, and no one else has even heard of it, let alone remember it. If I were to write a book based on the one verse that I remember, but the rest of it was fully made up by me, would I be in trouble with the copyright holder of the original song should that person ever come across my book?
Answers:
You really need to research that agressively. Here's my suggestion. Copyrighted songs are tracked by one of two music services world-wide, BMI and ASCAP. They both have web services that include song searches, by title, author and lyrics.
Go ye forth to those sites and glean!
I have a feeling that if this is a children's song, it may have always been in the public domain, or at least lapsed long ago. Copyrights are not held in perpetuity. I think it's something like seventy years...
Good luck with that.
A good question and it's good that you cared enough to ask it.
It's probably worth pursuing to find out if there's still a copyright in effect on the song. You might try entering just a phrase from the song into your search engine. You might be amazed at how many hits you'll get.
My own advice would be that if you're going to write new verses 4-10, you should just go ahead and write new verses 1-3, also.
But be careful. One never knows where inspiration comes from, and if you have an idea for verse 5, for instance, can you be sure it's your own idea and not some subliminal memory of the actual verse 5 from your childhood?
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