Three Legal Liabilities that Plague My Company

In this blog I was instructed to watch three podcasts about entertainment law as it pertained to my emerging company. First, I found www.reelseo.com and an interview with Entertainment attorney Gordon Firemark. Mr. Firemark is an industry specific lawyer who deals mostly in entertainment industry related cases. With the increased distribution of art on the Internet, the entity of law is having some trouble keeping pace. Mr. Firemark doesn’t see this as a problem because law is overinflated as it is. If the courts tried to stay side-by-side with the ever-changing entertainment field, it would be bloated with changes and new laws as fast as we get new artists. One of the largest issues I face as a new company surfing on this digital wave is how to monetize my creations and perpetuate business. Dealing with individual’s privacy rights like slander, labial, and copyrighted materials could result in litigation my young company cannot afford to deal with. You can loose your investment capitol quickly if the proper research is not completed about which legal steps to take, and in what order. Mr. Firemark instructs new clients to choose their lawyer like they would choose their doctor. You have to have a gargantuan amount of trust and communication with him or her. Gordon says another huge problem for a young company is focusing on the bottom line when it comes to hiring said law professional. Sometimes the larger price tag results in the work being completed faster and much more accurate, budget shopping for lawyers is not a recommended practice at all. Mr. Firemark also spoke on gaining the proper permissions when producing these very personal works. Word-of-mouth is not good enough when your company is making better revenue, this is when people feel exploited and demand compensation. Transactional lawyers like Mr. Firemark will even help with the negotiation of these permissions as to make the acquisition of said permissions attainable. Knowing which licenses and permissions to obtain, and in which order is of the utmost importance to the future success of my new company. Secondly, I found a podcast on Entertainment Law and the Challenges of Celebrity from www.legaltalknetwork.com. It was briefly discussed about the aforementioned permissions as being a very important step in the process. The reasoning from this podcast was the production process for most of the forms of art takes ample time and effort. Gaining the licenses and permissions will only ensure the investment from the artist is not in vain. After that taste of redundancy, they did cover the topic of intellectual property and the common mistakes people have when thinking of I.P. Most people have the, “I’m not making any profit” defense when using another individuals I.P., this excuse leaks water faster than the Titanic. Most individuals also through around the term “Fair Use” and have no concept of it’s meaning. According to www.law.com, fair use is the non-competitive right to use of copyrighted material without giving the author the right to compensation or to sue for infringement of copyright. Ok, I know this means almost nothing to most of you out there and I apologize. Simply, if a teacher copies sixty reproductions of a Time Magazine cover of a natural disaster to help illustrate to his or her students the effects of such an event, that would be fair use. If The Discovery Channel copied the same pictures for its new book on natural disasters, that would not ne fair use. This is the simplest example I could think of, there are many other iterations of varying degrees. Basically, get to know what fair use is before you claim it. One of the most misused tools from the Internet is the countless graphical and pictorial images we so callously adorn our websites and social media pages with. Make no mistake; you must acquire a license for the use of most any image you find on the Internet. This comes back to bite people more times than not, it is a hard lesson after implementing efforts and finances that may not return to you. Finally, I found Mr. Gordon Firemark’s podcasts on www.entertainmentlawupdate.com. You may remember me mentioning Mr. Firemark at the top of this blog. This site is his very own, as he is asked to interview on countless others. We all know about downloading material from the Internet, this is an old subject that gets older by the minute. As with fair use, Internet downloading is a “white whale” for most individuals. I believe knowing the laws pertaining to your business is the most important thing one could spend their time learning. Sometimes, permissions are not needed and you could spend more time and effort than you need to. However, contradictions prevail in the institution of law, the following is no exception. Eminem is a famous rapper and we all know that. What you may not know is even the hardest of rappers still has to rum his or her business tight as a drum. Eminem signed a deal with FBT in 1998 for the master license of his material for their use. Over the years, the initial deal was pushed up through many more labels as they were merged, purchased, and otherwise shifted around. Distributed material online was not being treated as single copy sales. The label said because of this they were entitled to half of royalties because it was still under the original master license. Here is the contradiction to the rule. ASCAP lost the same fight for a polar opposite ruling. The 2ns circuit court ruled against ASCAP stating that downloads are not public performances. According to them, a public performance is when you hear the works as they are happing live. This ruling makes it so ASCAP will not receive any royalties for any downloads over the Internet. For those of you who are songwriters or musicians out there, this means all of those iTunes downloads you are so excited about, guess who pays you for your songs? That’s right, ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, you get the idea. Sad but true, the Internet has changed the way a hard-working musician takes in revenue, you had better “pay” close attention to who is watching your back for you legally. I know this seems like common knowledge, but if you are going to dig dirt, make sure you have the strongest and most appropriate shovel. These liabilities along with others will plague my emerging business in the near future. Knowledge is most definitely power, strike hard and strike deep. Until next time…

Check out the podcasts I watched at:
www.entertainmentlawupdate.com
www.legaltalk.com
www.reelseo.com

The fair use definition comes from:
www.law.com

Don't fight the law...the law will win.

In our newest journey together I have been instructed to research some legal issues that may cause a problem in the future of my, or any emerging business. I know this is not audio related, I beg of you audiophiles out there to be patient with me on this one. You never know, you may learn something you didn’t know before. After extensive thought on the matter, I have narrowed all of the possible legal liabilities I may have in the launching and operation of my business. My personal top three liabilities started with my works being based on interviews with my clients. Because of where my partners and I are with our business, I cannot divulge any information about exactly what out product consists of. I can tell you that it is musical in nature and involves out clients on a very creative, personal level. We will be conducting an interview-style session with our clients to aid in the production. Because of this action, preparing a life story rights agreement with the subject of our production will be a definite. With this document in place, our company cannot be sued at a later time if monetarily we are reaping success. As I was researching this liability, I found a real-life story about this very problem. In Winston-Salem, North Carolina a young black teenager was accused of murdering a 25-year-old white woman. He was charged and convicted of the crime. The young man’s lawyer had exhausted all legal possibilities to free his client, except to find the murder himself. He actually completed this gargantuan task by finding the real murderer. After nearly two decades of incarceration, the wrongly convicted man was released with nothing but forgiveness in his heart for his accusers. As I read this story, I kept thinking how impossibly crazy it must have been for this man to have lost the prime of his life to the injustice system. If this story wasn’t made for a Hollywood movie, no story will suffice. Filmmaker Ricki Stern and co-director Annie Sundberg did secure said rights, not only for themselves for the ten-years of research dedicated to following the case, but for their subject Darryl Hunt. So many times these rights are not thought of or secured and later litigation will disrupt any positive momentum gained. Hand-in-hand with this liability is the fact that our product will rely on interviews, not only with the subject, but also with the family and friends. The same rules and problems remain with this liability that existed with the last one. Our unique “interview” process gathers information required to produce the product. The life story rights agreement will prevent all unnecessary litigations from occurring. My last and possibly most dangerous liability would be that of sub-contracting other musicians and songwriters to help with the musical workload. If the musician I use were an employee of our company then our company would own the rights to any material written for the company. In my company’s case, we would be sub-contracting most of the work rather than to hire on more employees. In this situation, we would need to have a work for hire agreement or license between the contractor and us. In the case of Playboy vs. Dumas, drawings and paintings by the artist Nagel were being fought over and reached litigation. In that specific case, the court decided that the work for hire agreement was not specific to the beginning of the project. Even after the works were complete, they deemed them works for hire. Of course there are always exceptions to every rule. In the case of Schiller & Schmidt, Inc. vs. Nordisco Corp., the court decided in reverse favor of having the work for hire agreement before the work starts. This goes to show that there are no definite answers, but the intelligent person would view this as a warning. If you are operating your own business or decide to open one in the future, know your rights along with the rights of the people you are working with. It is a confusing, hairy business, I guess that is why not everyone can and will do it. Good, more room for me, until next time.

References:
http://www.documentary.org/content/whose-story-it-anyway-obtaining-subjects-life-story-rights
http://www.ivanhoffman.com/work2.html