i am finishing my album and i want to put copyright on it, if possible, for free. could anyone tell me how to?

Answer 1

I've heard of people mailing things to themselves and not opening the envelopes. This puts a dated postmark on the letter which is sealed. This way, you have proof of when you came up with the songs. But this only partially protects your songs. To truly copyright your stuff, do it the right way which requires a fee.

Answer 2

From what I know from business law I is that if you can- pay a small free and file a copy with the office but if you don't have the small fee which is usually less than 100 i believe then you can still express your copyright legally but would have to make it well known. read about it on wikipedia- i pasted some info from there below. Also if you want to just copyright your album so noone can digitally steal it then theres software out there so people can't burn copies. Again people will find away around this. Key thing is if you can't dish out the money then you need official evidence when you came out with the song, and you wrote it.

Thus, as with property, a copyright need not be granted or obtained through official registration with any government office. Once an idea has been reduced to tangible form, for example by securing it in a fixed medium (such as a drawing, sheet music, photograph, a videotape or a letter), the copyright holder is entitled to enforce his or her exclusive rights. However, while a copyright need not be officially registered for the copyright owner to begin exercising his exclusive rights, registration of works (where the laws of that jurisdiction provide for registration) does have benefits; it serves as prima facie evidence of a valid copyright and enables the copyright holder to seek statutory damages and attorney's fees (whereas in the USA, for instance, registering after an infringement only enables one to receive actual damages and lost profits).

Answer 3

In the US and many other countries, you work is copyrighted as soon as it is produced ("fixed in a tangible medium"). So, once you've recorded your album, it's copyright protected.

There are two ways to increase the level of protection. The first involves mailing a copy of the recording to yourself by certified mail. Do not open it on receipt -- that sets a date that the album existed, if someone comes along later to challenge your copyright.

The other is to register your copyright with the govt. In the US, that's the US Copyright Office (http://www.copyright.gov)

The cost to register (last I checked) is $50, and it provides not only the date of registration, but additional statutory protections. It's well worth the money.