Copyright: CFR-NY Resources

Last Updated: Jun 17, 2025 1:09 PM

About

This list is curated from the resources made available through the Copyright First Responders of New York program. Though each of these resources is publicly available, they are presented here to provide Copyright First Responders with some assistance with particularly challenging copyright questions.

Copyright resources

Music Copyright Infringement Resource
This resource provides information about music copyright infringement cases from the mid-nineteenth century forward in the U.S. and, to an increasing extent, in foreign jurisdictions.
Author Rights: Using the SPARC Author Addendum
The SPARC Author Addendum is a legal instrument that modifies the publisher’s agreement and allows you to keep key rights to your articles. The Author Addendum is a free resource developed by SPARC in partnership with Creative Commons and Science Commons, established non-profit organizations that offer a range of copyright options for many different creative endeavors.

Public Domain resources

Copyright Registration and Renewal Records
The Catalog of Copyright Entries, published by the US Copyright Office, contains a list of all copyright registrations received. This page includes pointers to electronic copies of copyright registrations.
Copyright Services: Copyright Term and the Public Domain (Cornell University Library)
Determining what is or isn't in the public domain can be a complicated and lengthy process. However, the chart on this page can help guide through some of the labyrinthine rules of US copyright.
Copyright Renewals (Stanford Libraries)
Stanford's Copyright Renewal Database is a searchable index of the copyright renewal records for books published in the US between 1923 and 1963. Note that the database includes only renewal records, not original registrations, and only Class A (book) renewals received by the US Copyright Office between 1950 and 1992.
Copyright Public Records System (Library of Congress)
State Copyright Resource Center (Harvard Library)
This review of state copyright law is a project of Katherine Zimmerman, Copyright Fellow at Harvard Library's Office for Scholarly Communication.

Additional readings

Increasing Librarian Confidence and Comprehension in a Fair Use Training Session (Benson, 2018)
Benson, Sara R. "Increasing Librarian Confidence and Comprehension in a Fair Use Training Session." portal: Libraries and the Academy 18, no. 4 (2018): 781-804. https://doi.org/10.1353/pla.2018.0045.
Unlocking the Digital Age Subtitle:The Musician's Guide to Research, Copyright, and Publishing
Unlocking the Digital Age: The Musician's Guide to Research, Copyright, and Publishing (Kathleen DeLaurenti and Andrea I. Copland, 2024)

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Based on coursework developed at the Peabody Conservatory, this book serves as a crucial resource for early career musicians navigating the complexities of the digital era. This guide bridges the gap between creative practice and scholarly research, empowering musicians to confidently share and protect their work as they expand their performing lives beyond the concert stage as citizen artists. It offers a plain language resource that helps early career musicians see where creative practice and creative research intersect and how to traverse information systems to share their work. As professional musicians and researchers, the authors’ experiences on stage and in academia makes this guide an indispensable tool for musicians aiming to thrive in the digital landscape.