Legal Podcasts

For a legal themed post, I listened to a few podcasts by Gordon P. Firemark, Esq. on his Entertainment Law Update website. Firemark discusses a number of copyright related issues, which I found particularly helpful in relation to my business plan.

The first podcast I listened to contained a discussion of the website Megaupload and its legal issues with Universal Music Group. Megaupload sued Universal Music Group following a takedown of a controversial music video uploaded to YouTube by Megaupload. The video contained a number of Universal Music Group artists, and was pulled based on contract details with YouTube. Firemark argues that this case highlights an issue in the system that allows labels to take down content at will. There is no system for an independent look to be taken at content by YouTube employees before it is removed, and the labels have access to take down materials directly. He went on to reference another issue that happened in the rap community in which a flagging algorithm was used to tell if an unauthorized user uploaded a song. Two rap artists performed different lyrics over the same instrumental, which they both obtained licensing to do, but since one of the artists was a Universal Music Group artist the other artist’s song was flagged and removed.

The Megaupload issue could potential apply to my business because episodes of Discover Wisconsin often license instrumental interludes as backing music. If the same flagging system for content used on YouTube is one day applied to mobile app content, then it would be important to make sure none of our content is at issue if another company happens to use the same audio track.

The next recording I listened to dealt with Universal Media Group again, this time with their dispute against the website Grooveshark. Grooveshark, owned by Escape Media, had a complaint filed against it based on the way the site runs. Users upload their music library, and then any user can listen to the tracks for free. Grooveshark has an ad network, and then offers a premium version without ads. Universal Music Group claims Grooveshark is a pirate website, and streams unauthorized content. They also claim that employees have uploaded over 113,000 songs to the site, and even listed names of employees in the complaint. This fact was based on a blog comment that stated employees are assigned a number of songs to upload each week. The employees were generated content since the site was new, and they wanted to have content available to their new users, but it’s interesting to hold them differently accountable since they are both employees and users.

My company may need to upload content to the mobile app before we have any user-generated content. Given that Grooveshark’s employees are listed in this complaint, I think it will be in our best interests to make sure any content employees upload is content copyrighted by the company, and not anything taken from other websites, be it text or image content.

The last podcast I listened to dealt with a nostalgia company using depictions of Wizard of Oz characters. Some believe that the characters from The Wizard of Oz are outside of copyright protection due to the fact that L. Frank Baum wrote the original book in 1900. However, Warner Brothers made the famous film in 1939. The nostalgia company in question acquired old posters from the movie, then took images out of the ads and put them on shirts, lunch boxes, cards, and other materials. Warner Brothers sued, and eventually the 8th circuit court ruled that features of film characters could be copyrighted, even if they are based on prior work. The scope covers all other visual representations, even advertising materials.

One potential concern this makes me think of is the fact that Discover Wisconsin features places of business in the episodes. If we used a picture of a business’s advertising materials, or recreated those materials, we could potentially get into trouble if we didn’t work out an agreement first.