Tips & Tutorials: Do you know your rights? (Part 1)
Posted on Friday, June 20 @ 18:50:27 MYT by idiotbox

When Gugliemo Marconi took the gold diadem of “Paterfamilias of Radios” he never thought his creation would take form to be essential in one’s life. I believe, with radios, we have grown up with music from SW and MW, to AM and FM, Instilling in us a hope to be divas or may be rock stars. While some have given up on that, some are still chasing it whole-heartedly. Some are doing it for the love of music, probably have the intention of recording something to show their grand kids “hey, look Mat, atuk were the greatest rock star in KL circuit. What do you say to that?”. While some really want to be in the limelight, having the music heard, coming up with some original materials, gigging around. Despite the idea of some, to stay shaded under the the great tree of DIY, I do believe we should have a basic understanding on how the mainstream works. At least in the area of where we are suppose to be protected and may exercise our rights as musicians (sorry, mimes are not

included….hehe…..joke: if you are about to shoot a mime, should you use a silencer? He He He. Get it? Get it?.)

Copyright. It doesn’t imply copy is right, in fact it is againts that, hence the Copyright Act 1987, passed in Malaysia, apprently in the year of 1987,impose a protection for creators against unlawful use of their works without authorization. It is not only restricted to musical works, but a vast protecting arm for other intellectual properties by which I mean literature, industrial designs, arts, or films etc. But copyright law does not extend to ideas, or anything like names or titles.

Copyright gives the creators ‘economic rights’ and ‘moral rights’ by which they control the use of their materials (usually refered to as ‘works’) in how it is being manipulated or used. With this control a creator may ask for compensations, for any possible uses of his products if he/she wishes so, in a case for instance where his work is being published on-line, or being sampled into a song.

This is just a brief introduction. Sort of a attention-getting kinda thing. I intend to have this delivered in a few installments. By having acknowledged the nature of this site, I will try to stress more on the issues in the music milieu, which seems more appropriate. But generally I will touch on the overall look on the copyright issues. We will be looking at what are our rights as performing musicians, composers or lyricists, and tips and tricks to forfend our interests. We will be looking at the bodies in Malaysia who represents respective copyright owners as well. Till next time, ………….hmmm……whatever. ( I can’t seem to find a cool sign-off remark, dang!)

Please, please lemme know if you guys appreciate this article, so i may have a little bit of motivation to go on to the last drop, burning my night-oil.

>> How To Protect Your Musical Ideas


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My ceaseless gratitude to FREEFOTO.COM for allowing the uses of the photos for my article. (I'm bound to do this coz i took the photos from their gallery. Thanks Ian.)