Almost
every week, we write about some legal
issue that arises in digital and social media – many times talking about the
traditional media company that did something that they shouldn’t have done in
the online world, and ended up with some legal issues as a result. Two weeks
ago, I conducted a webinar, hosted by the Michigan
Association of Broadcasters and
co-sponsored by over 20 other state broadcast associations, where I tried to
highlight some of the many legal issues that can be traps for the unwary.
Issues we discussed included copyright
and trademark issues, a reminder about the FTC sponsorship identification rules for online media, FCC captioning obligations, privacy implications, as
well as discussions about the patent
issues that have
arisen with the use of software and hardware that makes the digital
transmission of content possible. Slides from that presentation are available here and, for the full webinar, a YouTube video of the
entire presentation is available below which can be reviewed when you have some
spare time over this upcoming holiday or at any other time that you want to
catch up on your legal obligations.
Some of the specific issues that we
talked about are familiar to readers of this blog. We discussed the many issues
with taking photographs and other content
found on the Internet and repurposing them to your own website without getting permission from the
content’s creator (see our articles here and here). Similar issues have arisen when TV stations have
taken YouTube videos and played them on their TV stations without getting
permission from the creator. Music issues arise all the time, especially in
producing online videos and creating digital content like podcasts, as your
usual music licenses from ASCAP, BMI, SESAC,
GMR and SoundExchange don’t cover the reproduction and distribution rights
involved when content is copied or downloaded rather than live-streamed (see our article here). The presentation also cautioned companies to be
careful about trying to rely on “fair
use” as there are
no hard and fast rules on when a use of copyrighted materials without
permission is in fact fair (see our articles here and here on that subject).
Similarly, there are many other
potential pitfalls for digital media companies. We’ve written about some of the FTC rules on requiring sponsorship
identification on sponsored digital content – even tweets and Facebook posts (see
our articles here and here). Plus, there are always issues about privacy and security of personal
information that
sites collect – and particularly strict rules for content directed to children.
And, as many stations found out when a company asserted patent infringement
claims about digital music storage systems used by most radio stations (see our
articles here and here), patent issues can also arise in connection with any
companies use of digital media.
But, as we discussed on the blog (here and here), and as discussed in the webinar, protecting your brands through trademarks can lead to the ability to exploit
those brands through licensing them to other media companies. But branding can
also be a concern as, once something is put online, it is available everywhere,
and when someone who has already obtained rights to that content discovers that
it is being used without permission elsewhere, you can have issues. So, before
branding, do a trademark search to try to anticipate any issues that might
arise with any new brand or slogan that you may be planning to use (see our
article here).
These are but some of the issues that I
discussed in my webinar. As there are so many legal issues that can arise in
the digital and social media worlds, you need to be prepared. This presentation
does not give you all the answers – but it does try to identify many of the
places where questions can arise. So check out the slides or video version of
our webinar for more details, and stay safe in your journey in the online
world.
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