ABSTRACT
Copyright exists to protect the interests of songwriters and music publishers. Historically, copyright in the United States goes back to the U.S. Copyright Law of 1790. In terms of the music industry, the Copyright Law of 1909 governed copyright in the United States for sixty-seven years. The 1909 act provided for copyrights to be protected for twenty-eight years, with a provision for a renewal that brought an additional twenty-eight years of protection, doubling the longevity of the copyright to fifty-six years. When the Copyright Law of 1976 was passed by the U.S. Congress, that protection was extended to the life of the last surviving author plus an additional fifty years. In practical terms this meant that if a twenty-two-year-old song writer collaborates with a fifty-five-year-old songwriter, their song will be copyrighted for fifty years after the death of the last author. In this case, the chances are that the twenty-two-year-old will be around long after the death of his coauthor, so the children and even grandchildren of both writers will continue to collect income from the songs that they composed. In 1998, copyright protection was extended for an additional twenty years, so the term of copyright is now the life of the last surviving author plus seventy years.
