Reprinting Copyrighted materials?

Question

If I own a songbook, am I legally allowed to reprint the lyrics? I was under the impression that it's acceptable to reprint lyrics from a songbook if you own a book for every copy of the lyric. i.e. if I own 50 songbooks, I can reprint 50 copies of the song for a single use. Is this correct? a link to a legal website would be very helpful.

Answer 1

There is probably verbage there in the book about licensing/reprinting. If it's for your own personal use and not public distribution you should be fine. At any rate, you could contact the publisher and ask.

Answer 2

You can copy, or reprint, virtually, anything, as long as it is for your own personal use, and you don't intend to republish it, in any form.  So, in fact, there IS NO limit on how many times you can make a copy from a singe source.  If you wanted to wallpaper your room with copies of a single page of a songbook, there would be no legal issues.

If you, and fifty of your closest friends wanted to go Xmas caroling around your neighborhood, there should be no problems with your making fifty copies of a Xmas songbook.  However, if you were a member of a more formal church or school choir, or, part of a professional singing group, then infringement issues may arise.  Just like, even an amateur theatrical troupe has to buy a separate script for each player, this musical group may be required to buy a separate songbook for each member.

Every illegal copy you make is income taken away from the writer or publisher of the book.

Here is a link to the official US government copyright office website.  This is he best place to get REAL and accurate information about copyright laws.

http://copyright.gov