Copyright Craziness

Japan has some REALLY funky copyright laws that maybe one day I will get in more detail about...

Many things that would make your head explode trying to contemplate how they got that way and why they are still that way...(Like no Fair Use...) (I don't want my reader's heads to explode so that is why I am not going further into it...)

But one thing I learned new last weekend was about copyrights for music.

Apparently, you have to pay a certain organization (the copyright "police" or "yakuza/mafia" depending on your view of them) even if you are performing your own work!

A friend of mine is a composer and I guess it works out for him because any time a group in Japan wants to play his song in a performance the copyright yakuza show up (invited or not) and demand money!! They take a piece of the pie and then hand over whats leftover to my friend.. who says he makes a good chunk of money at the end of the year because of this.
However, when he wants to play his own music he has to pay a fee to these guys as well... some of that money will come back to him but some won't....

Kind of messed up in my opinion.... So for most people it is probably cheaper just to not copyright your stuff unless you are sure people are going to copy or want to perform it.....