Copyright is the statutory or common law right of song writers, recording artists, poets, artists, and authors of all types of intellectual property to publish their works, and to prevent others from copying their works without their permission.

Section 106, Title 17 of the U.S. Code (also see Chapter 5 in the U.S. Copyright Office’s website) defines the exclusive rights of copyright holders.

The following is a description of those rights:

Subject to sections 107 through 120, the owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following:

  1.  to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies or phonorecords;

  2.  to prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work;

  3.  to distribute copies or phonorecords of the copyrighted work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending;

  4.  in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and motion pictures and other audiovisual works, to perform the copyrighted work publicly;

  5.  in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and pictorial, graphic, or sculptural works, including the individual images of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, to display the copyrighted work publicly; and

  6.  in the case of sound recordings, to perform the copyrighted work publicly by means of a digital audio transmission.

Without delving into the nuance of each of the above items, it should be fairly clear that the copyright holder has the exclusive right to all of the above, and with the exception of musical works subject to Section 115 (compulsory exemption) and in cases of “fair use”, the rights holder has complete control over the ability to grant licenses for the use of any of those rights or the right to assign those rights to others (publishers) either in whole or in part.  Therefore any unauthorized use of a copyrighted work other than “fair use” is copyright infringement.