Copyright does not protect ideas or information as such, but it does protect the way in which information or ideas are expressed. Therefore you do not infringe copyright merely by using other people’s ideas.
Copyright does not protect ideas or information as such, but it does protect the way in which information or ideas are expressed. Therefore you do not infringe copyright merely by using other people’s ideas.
Copyright protection in Australia is free and automatic: there is no system of registration. Copyright protection does not depend upon publication, a copyright notice, or any other procedure. Rather, it depends on creating and recording your work.
However, we do recommend that you use the copyright notice, as it notifies people that the work is protected by copyright and identifies the person from whom permission should be sought. The notice consists of the symbol “©”, followed by the name of the copyright owner, and the year of first publication. For example, © Bruce de Basil 2002 could be placed on film footage of your choreography, or on documents carrying your notated choreography.
Copyright protection only applies if the work is recorded in material form. You should therefore ensure that you make a video tape or other record of each of your choreographic works. Where your work is protected, you might also alert people to this fact by putting the notice on programs for live performances.
Even if a dance created specifically for social purposes were found to be a dramatic work for the purposes of copyright and even if a social dance situation were found to be a “public performance”, it may be clear from the circumstances that the creator allowed the dance to be performed in such a way without express permission. This would not be the case for a dance which is created for audience and stage presentation.
Any implied permission to dance socially does not, however, necessarily imply permission to make copies of dance sheets.
If the dance is not a protected dance, people do not need permission to perform it. If it is a protected dance, one way to notify people that you want people to be able to dance your dance would be to put a statement to this effect on your dance sheets.
Copyright protects “literary works” which may include a written description of the steps of a line dance. For example, dance sheets written for people to take home to learn the steps to a dance may be protected by copyright.
A dance sheet may be protected by copyright whether or not the dance itself is protected by copyright.
Owners of copyright in a dance sheet have a number of exclusive rights. These include the exclusive right to reproduce the work (for example, by photocopying it, copying it by hand, or scanning it into a computer) and the exclusive right to communicate the work to the public (for example, via email or from a website). This means that if you wanted to make copies of a dance sheet, or email copies to people, or put someone else’s dance sheet onto a website, you would generally need permission from the copyright owner.
It is unlikely that you would need permission to publicly perform an unprotected dance from a dance sheet; instructions about how a particular dance is performed are not “reproduced” by merely following the instructions. You will, however, need permission to publicly perform a dance from a sheet if it is a protected line dance.
You may be able to avoid infringing any copyright in an unprotected line dance by taking the information from the sheet and writing down the steps in your own way. It is unlikely, however, that you could avoid infringing copyright in a protected line dance by writing the steps down in your own way.
Note that a person who creates a line dance sheet will generally have the right to be attributed as the creator of that particular dance sheet. Note also that this right is separate to any rights he or she might have as a copyright owner, and may apply whether or not that person owns copyright in the dance sheet.