[Fmpro] FMPRO Digest, Vol 39, Issue 4

[Sean Goble]

Wow.  Okay, so here's answers where I have answers.  Please keep in mind 
this is strictly from a Canadian/SOCAN perspective.

Dave: 
The reason you've had so many differing responses is because there is no 
complete answer to protecting your copyright.  Since you have to protect 
your copyright in civil court, you should cover as many bases as possible. 
 The way to look at it is you are creating a paper trail so that should 
your copyright ever come into question, you have documents to prove your 
claim.  The first thing I tell any of our members is if you cowrite, or 
someone has an interest in your song, GET THE SPLITS IN WRITING AND 
SIGNED.  Composing is an organic process, and this will quite often feel 
awkward but anything you can get down where the splits are decided is 
incredibly useful down the road. 
Copyright: There is the poor man's copyright, which is admittedly not fool 
proof, but it's a start.  This is the practice of sending a copy of your 
work by registered mail to yourself and not opening it.  This gives you a 
date that the work was completed but isn't strong enough to stand on its 
own.  Register your work with your PRO.  As far as the actual act of 
copyrighting your song, I normally recommend that people use the US 
Copyright system instead of the Canadian as the Canadian system only uses 
title and writers (so if I write a song called "I Love You" I get thrown 
in with all the other songs of the same name) whereas the US system takes 
a copy of your work.  US Copyrights can be submitted in Canadian court.

Registering your work: Some people submit only the songs that see the 
light of day, some people submit every note they've ever written.  But I 
strongly suggest you use our webpage to submit your works (if you're a 
SOCAN member) as this cuts down on paper and there is no question whether 
it has been processed or not.  You can monitor it from the page.  SOCAN 
uses a 100% model so splits are 50% writer share and 50% publisher.

Retitling: I think I need some clarification.  Do you mean a)changing the 
names of work b) giving/selling your work to someone else or c) within a 
publishing context such as labelling an entire acquired library? 

Mark:

Publishers: I should have been clearer on this in my first post.  The way 
publishers register with multiple PROs internationally is by creating 
business entities in other countries.  For instance in N. America there 
could be Large Publisher Conglomerate in the US collected by BMI and then 
in Canada there would be LPC Canada that has a SOCAN account (normally 
that would be a SOCAN "B" account but I'll explain that a little more in a 
minute) that collects in Canada.  As we don't want to step on BMI's toes 
in this case, SOCAN normally requires some type of office up here in order 
for them to be a member of SOCAN.  In effect it's like having a 
subpublisher just under the same name.  Technically, these should be 
limited deals, but because of the nature of the beast, we accept that 
publishers, the larger ones at least, will have subpublishers/country 
specific versions of the company and we try to accommodate them, even if 
it doesn't technically fall into "membership" as it should be.

Splitting your catalogue between US PROS:  When you become a SOCAN member 
you choose who you would like to collect on your behalf in the US.  These 
are SOCAN A, B and S accounts.  You, as a writer, can get split accounts 
where part of your account is an A and part is a B if necessary (say if 
you were published by one ASCAP publisher and one BMI publisher), but 
normally we encourage you to pick one to avoid money getting caught up as 
one PRO collects on your behalf for another PRO's song, it gets sent to us 
and then we have to send it back so that it can go through the right 
society.   You can however switch who is representing you by requesting it 
from SOCAN.

Assignment Letter:  We have what is called an "Authorized Representative" 
form that allows our members to give partial or complete control of their 
account to a third party (while retaining their own control of course). 
However, you need to be a member of SOCAN in order to do this.  We do not 
pay out to non-members.  If you are an American writer, who is represented 
by an American PRO, all claims, requests and questions need to be directed 
through your PRO.  If you call SOCAN, we'll happily field your call but we 
can't do anything about cue sheets, missed broadcasts, works or finances. 
All directions have to come through your PRO. 

Les:

IMRO: Good catch, I read that in a post after I had written my email and 
to be honest, I didn't know.

Operating Costs: Our operating costs come from the "Radio Pool".  This 
pool, while primarily containing the license fees from our customers 
(public performance, broadcast), also contains money from various tariffs 
that we are unable to monitor.  We call it the "radio pool" because the 
performance data from radio is what is used to distribute the money in 
this pool.  But no foreign money goes into this pool, it is paid directly 
to our members.

Watermarking: I'm really not privy to high level decisions such as reasons 
for watermarking or not watermarking.  Some of the technologies that were 
looked at came up a little short as they did not cross over when copied 
etc.  No doubt that has changed and we do keep on top of this stuff so it 
may happen yet, but right now we find fingerprinting to be a better 
approach on radio as we don't need to rely on the file itself for ID, we 
can do it from our end and I've heard rumoured that a similar technology 
is being looked at for TV/Internet.  Our company line however is that we 
are still looking at the technology and may utilize it in the future. 

Broadcaster Contract:  This isn't my end of the company, I am a member 
account executive which means I work with membership and all concerns of 
our members.  However, even if I were in licensing I don't think we'd be 
allowed to give out any details on our contracts.  Sorry.  :-(

Multiple PROs: We may be dealing with an issue of semantics here. 
Membership, at least around here, is generally referring to worldwide and 
I assumed (probably erroneously) that's what you meant.   Part of the 
process of becoming a member is that we do a back check on an 
international database (IPI) to make sure you are not a member of another 
society.  If you are, we ask them to release you.  This is maintained 
universally (or is supposed to be) and is not unique to SOCAN.  However, 
as I did come in part way through this conversation (I've been on the 
board for a while but I don't always get the opportunity to read every 
digest), it occurs to me that you may be discussing limited territory 
deals which do happen.
        A limited deal is where you assign a PRO for a specific territory. 
 I have seen this done with one or maybe at the most two territories.  So 
if you were a SOCAN member and a Canadian citizen living in Manhattan you 
could have SOCAN for worldwide ex. US and then have an American PRO 
collect in the States. 
        Here's the problems we've experienced when this starts to expand 
beyond one (I'm playing antagonist because it looks as if it has already 
been advocated if we're talking limited here).  Firstly, for each PRO you 
join, you need to qualify and you need to be released by your current PRO 
for that territory.  While some PROs have few membership qualifications 
and will happily sign a foreign based member, most PROs, unless it's a 
special case, restrict membership to people residing in their territory. 
This allows the smaller guys to exist and work with, instead of against, 
the big societies.   Second is taxes.  You're getting taxed in a multiple 
of different territories.  If your accounting is set-up for this, then it 
isn't a problem.  A third is you are gumming up the works a bit as limited 
territories are rare (and normally not recommended) and I'm sure you have 
experience with any large company trying to deal with something that it 
doesn't handle every day.  The last real issue is your catalogue.  If 
you're working with limited territories, you need to supply your entire 
catalogue to the societies working in limited territory deals.  Your 
society (whoever is representing you worldwide ex. limited territories) is 
not going to submit your catalogue to a limited territory country because 
it isn't claiming on your behalf in that territory.  And the limited 
territory PRO is not going to use a foreign PRO's list even if it were 
submitted.  So you will need to maintain your catalogue in multiple 
databases.
        These issues are the biggies and if you don't see anything that's 
a deal breaker, then limited territories may be a good option for some 
people though we've found that the majority members who try it tend to 
come back to a worldwide. 

Commercials: You're right, SOCAN does not pay or collect  for commercials, 
60 secs or less, aired in Canada. There's no real answer here. Commercials 
are simply something we don't pay, the same way that we don't pay for 
skating rink performances.  All PROs have different things they pay and 
don't pay, for instance we pay for all concerts while US PROs only pay the 
top 200.  It's a matter of policies and resources and while surely here, 
in a board full of A/V composers, commercials are a large focus, with 
other members it would be much preferred that we pay a different area as 
theoretically a composer of a work in a commercial has already been paid 
while a person having their song covered on stage has not.  It's a 
difficult line to walk and it does get revisited from time to time but 
that's the best I can give you at the moment.

Geesh Les, throw me a softball or two next time would you?  :-)

Okay, I think that's it.  Hope I didn't put everyone to sleep.

Cheers,
-Sean