copyright intellectual-property australia
Do I own copyright in a recording I just made?
<p>I am a freelance recording engineer in Australia.</p>

<p>I was engaged to make a recording in the expectation I would be paid for my services. After the job, the producer indicated that the job was pro-bono and would not be paying for my services. They had already passed the material onto the client.</p>

<p>In this situation, who owns the recording copyright in the material?</p>

<p>My reading of section 97 of the 1968 Copyright Act (Cth) is that as the "maker" of the recording and the absence of any "Valuable Consideration" that I am owner of the copyright in the recording until such time as I "release" the copyright to a third party, or I receive "valuable consideration" for the services involved in making the recording.</p>

<p>The producer contests that there was a verbal agreement to make the recording for free and yet I have a hard and fast policy on doing work for free. I don't do it. If it had even been mentioned in passing, it would have been shut down immediately.</p>

<p><a href="http://www5.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/ca1968133/s97.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">The law</a> does indeed say that "the maker of a sound recording is the owner of any copyright subsisting in the recording by virtue of this Part", with the exception of when a "person makes, for valuable consideration, an agreement with another person for the making of a sound recording by the other person", and the recording is pursuant to that agreement. The law does not impose a burden on the engineer to secure copyright in the recording, it imposes a burden on the person hoping to override the engineer's copyright. If there is no agreement, or if there is no consideration, then the engineer would retain copyright. However, "consideration" need not be money: it could also be publicity, e.g. a line on the album cover saying "Sound engineer: Mark Jones". In which case, the question that would have to be resolved in court is whether there was such an agreement. The other side would have to establish that there was such an agreement.</p>
