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