The Logic Off Topic list

Are you saying only the new lyrics are copyrighted or the entire song? What if you wrote new words to an old song re-copyrighted? Could you play/record it royalty free? From what you say, it would seem so. 

However, from my experience with the copyright law, the words and music are together. This makes for a dangerous situation. Lets say you write a great tune, and work with a lyricist who writes shit words, you copyright it. Later you write better lyrics. However, you can't simply deal the original lyric writer out. That person owns 50% of the song - not just the words.

For this reason, I think you need to have a contract (between co-writers) covering such circumstances. 

However, I am not a big expert and its quite possible I am wrong. Please put me in my place if I mispeak.


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Those songs are obviously ancient, but over the years, 
they've had many, many sets of lyrics. Publishers would have writers 
come up with new sets of lyrics, and then they could copyright the 
songs once again. Especially in the case of these old slave songs, 
the new politically correct versions currently out would have fresh 
lyrics under copyright.