How to make money off another man's back

So everyone in the world more or less has heard of The Beatles. They're world famous, and quite rightly too, they wrote some fantastic songs. Now these fantastic songs would have brought in tremendous amounts of money over the years, whenever someone bought an album, a single or legally downloaded one. Even every time a song is played on the radio the band still make money. Wouldn't it be fantastic if you could cash in on that money? One man found a way to do this. Michael Jackson.

In 1985, he made what was arguably the best business move an entertainer could make and bought the rights to The Beatles collection, for a pretty incredible amount of money no doubt! After which, each time an album or single was sold, or a song played on the radio Michael took his cut of the profits for owning the copyrights for the songs.

The moral of the story is that it's not the musicians that are in control of the things they've created, it's the copyright that they've taken out over the material. While it's true that taking out a copyright will protect your intellectual property from being copied, it doesn't mean that others can't make money from your work. Copyrights are a necessity for any kind of artist or business person, but it's almost always the record labels, in a musicians case, that controls the content. They're wrapped up good and proper!

So there you have it, if you want to make money manipulating the laws which covers intellectual property all you have to do is buy the copyrights for some multimillion dollar musicians material. Simple....right?

Information sourced from: http://www.ipwatchdog.com/2009/07/01/michael-jackson-and-the-beatles-copyrights/id=4363/