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  • What the 9th Circuit Does and Does Not Tell Us about Fair Use and the DMCA. Ruling in Lenz v. Universal Music (a.k.a. Prince and the Dancing Baby Case)

    Background

    Everyone will be blogging about this case so I’ll keep my background description short.

    On February 7, 2007, Stephanie Lenz uploaded to YouTube a 29-second home video of her two children dancing to the Prince’s song, “Let’s Go Crazy”. Universal Music Publishing, Prince’s publishing administrator at the time, issued a takedown notice under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and YouTube removed the video. Lenz objected to the takedown and, with the aid of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, launched a lawsuit against Universal Music. Lenz argues that her video usage of “Let’s Go Crazy” is a fair use and that Universal Music’s issuance of the takedown notice was bad faith and constitutes misrepresentation under the DMCA.

    After eight years of litigation, here is what the 9th Circuit does and does not reveal about copyright fair use and the DMCA in its opinion issued on September 14, 2015.

    The 9th Circuit Does Tell Us

    DMCA Takedowns Require a Fair Use Consideration. A copyright owner must consider the existence of fair use before sending a DMCA takedown notice.

    A Fair Use Is a Legally Authorized Use. The DMCA unambiguously contemplates fair use as a use authorized by the law. As a result, If the online content uses the copyright owner’s material in a manner that qualifies as a fair use, the copyright owner may not send a DMCA takedown notice. This is because, under such circumstances, the copyright owner may not legitimately make the required DMCA takedown statement that the copyright owner has a “good faith belief that the use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.”

    Copyright Owner’s Fair Use Assessment Need Not Be Correct; Good Faith Is Sufficient. The copyright owner sending a DMCA takedown notice need only have a subjective good faith belief that fair use does not apply. As long as it holds such a good faith belief, the copyright owner is not liable for any DMCA misrepresentation – even if a court subsequently reaches the opposite conclusion and decides that fair use does indeed apply.

    Intensive Analysis Is Not Required. In order to comply with DMCA requirements, the copyright owner’s fair use analysis need not be searching or intensive.

    Computers May Perform Fair Use Analysis. Computer algorithms can be a valid mechanism for considering fair use as part of the copyright owner’s identification of content to be taken down. This is the view of the majority. The dissenting judge – who agreed with the final result but disagreed with portions of the majority’s analysis – believes that a copyright owner may rely solely on a computer algorithm only if the computer algorithm can apply the four-factor copyright test indicated in the Copyright Act. While perhaps not impossible, getting a computer to apply what is a subjective and often fickle four-factor determination seems like quite a challenge.

    Willful Blindness Negates Good Faith. The willful blindness doctrine may be used to determine whether a copyright owner made a misrepresentation in its DMCA takedown request. In other words, if a copyright owner subjectively believes that there is a high probability that a particular use qualifies as a fair use and takes deliberate actions to avoid learning of the fair use, then the copyright owner’s sending a takedown notice for removal of the material is a DMCA misrepresentation.

    Damages Available Even If Plaintiff Suffers No Actual Loss. A plaintiff whose material is removed as a result of a DMCA takedown notice with a misrepresentation does not need to demonstrate any actual monetary loss in order to recover damages. Such a plaintiff may seek recovery of nominal damages from the copyright owner.

    The 9th Circuit Does NOT Tell Us

    Is It Fair Use? The 9th Circuit does not decide whether using 29 seconds of a copyrighted song in a family video and posting that video to the internet qualifies as a fair use of the song. That determination remains for the lower court. It could be quite some time before we have a court’s answer to this underlying fair use question. Commentators indicate that the Lenz parties might seek a Supreme Court review of the DMCA misrepresentation issue.

    How Does a Copyright Owner Satisfy the Good Faith Standard? While the 9th Circuit reveals that the copyright owner’s good faith belief that fair use does not apply is sufficient for the DMCA required fair use consideration, it does not provide many details on how copyright owners should get to this good faith belief.

    Here’s how Universal Music handled its YouTube DMCA takedown selection process An assistant in the Universal Music legal department monitored YouTube on a daily basis. For those videos including Prince songs, the assistant evaluated whether the video made significant use of the song, whether the song was recognizable in the video, whether the song was in a significant portion of the video, and the song was the focus of the video. While none of the Universal Music video evaluation guidelines explicitly included consideration of the fair use doctrine, the assistant did not issue DMCA takedown notices for videos that used a second or less of a Prince song or in which the Prince song was distorted by a noisy environment.

    The majority of the 9th Circuit did not render a decision on whether Universal Music’s process satisfied the good faith fair use determination required by the DMCA. Instead, it decided there was a factual dispute regarding whether Universal Music’s procedure satisfied the good faith requirement and left the question for the lower court. In contrast, the dissenting judge says that Universal Music’s policy did not meet the good faith standard because Universal Music did not clearly include a fair use consideration as part of its DMCA selection process.

    You can view the Lenz family video on YouTube here. You can read the full 9th Circuit opinion here.

  • Two Social Media Activities Guaranteed to Get You Sued. And One That Really Shouldn’t.

    Posting Iconic Copyrighted Images without a License

    Yes, you can easily cut and paste an image you find on the Internet. However, that doesn’t mean you should. If the image is an iconic image, your posting could easily generate a lawsuit.

    Consider the example of North Jersey Media Group (NJMG) which is a newspaper publisher and the copyright owner of the now-famous September 11, 2001 photograph of three firefighters raising the American flag at the ruins of the World Trade Center site (photo shown here). NJMG has sued several parties for using that image without its permission.

    After a court declined to dismiss a lawsuit in Fox News Network’s favor on fair use grounds, Fox elected to defend its fair use position in a jury trial scheduled for early 2016 (See Note). The Fox outcome may have persuaded Sarah Palin and her political action committee to offer $15,000 to settle a similar ongoing lawsuit filed by NJMG after the image was posted on Palin’s website and Facebook page. Disagreements over the confidentiality provision to go into the settlement agreement have slowed down the NJMG-Palin settlement process.

    Hopefully, most realize that the appearance of an image on the Internet does not place that image in the public domain and does not constitute permission to use the image in anyway one wants. Nevertheless, even some media organizations that should know better remain surprisingly clueless on this copyright principle.

    Falsely Implying that a Celebrity Endorses Your Company or Product

    Celebrities typically receive compensation when lending their names or images to promote a product. As a result, celebrities tend not to appreciate the unauthorized association of their persona with random products. It’s a violation of their publicity rights and such violations often lead to celebrity lawsuits against the offending company.

    One high-profile 2014 example started with a paparazzi photo capturing actress Katherine Heigl leaving a New York Duane Reade drugstore and carrying bags from the store. Duane Reade posted the image online with the caption “Even @KatieHeigl can’t resist shopping #NYC’s favorite drugstore.” Heigl launched a lawsuit alleging violations of the federal Lanham Act as well as the New York civil rights statutes and seeking $6 Million in damages. Duane Reade and Heigl eventually settled.

    Of course, publicity rights violations are not limited to online postings. They can result from using a famous persona in other media such as placing the celebrity’s image on a billboard, using the celebrity’s name or nickname in a magazine advertisement, or superimposing the celebrity’s head on a greeting card.

    Inadvertently Liking, Re-Tweeting, or Sharing Infringing Content

    It should be no surprise that much material posted online violates copyright laws. The copyright owner sometimes launches a lawsuit against the person or company that posted the infringing material. The forum – such as YouTube, Twitter, or Facebook – on which the material is posted has typically taken advantage of the safe harbor provisions offered by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and is, therefore, insulated from any copyright infringement liability stemming from infringing material posted by its users.

    But what happens if we – without realizing that the material is infringing – re-tweet, pin, like, or otherwise share infringing content? Does that action make us subject to a copyright infringement lawsuit?

    It usually does not.

    Potential Lawsuit Against Innocent Online Bystanders?

    Some blog chatter indicated that a recent lawsuit did target such innocent online bystanders. In June 2015, photographer Dennis Flaherty filed a lawsuit against the beverage company Big Red after Big Red incorporated Flaherty’s photograph of the Alamo into Big Red’s Twitter and Facebook postings. In addition to naming Big Red as a defendant, Flaherty also named five unidentified parties as defendants – referring to them in the complaint as “Does” (i.e., as in the colloquial John Doe or Jane Doe).

    Some commenters interpreted the inclusion of these “Does” to mean that Flaherty was suing people who simply visited the Big Red social media account and re-tweeted or pinned the Big Red posting containing Flaherty’s Alamo image. After looking at the Flaherty v. Big Red pleadings, I believe that’s a misinterpretation of Flaherty’s intent.

    Here’s Where It Gets A Bit Complicated

    There are different forms of copyright infringement. In his lawsuit against Big Red, Flaherty alleged that Big Red was liable for direct copyright infringement, vicarious copyright infringement, and contributory copyright infringement. Each type of infringement is a separate claim with distinct components. The contributory copyright infringement claim is relevant to my discussion.

    To win the contributory copyright infringement component of his lawsuit, Flaherty needed to show that while Big Red did not directly engage in the infringing activity, Big Red had reason to know such infringing activity took place and Big Red materially contributed to the infringing activity. In other words, in order for Big Red to be liable for contributory infringement, a third party must have committed direct infringement.

    Flaherty identifies the social media users activity of pinning or re-tweeting as the direct infringement that makes Big Red’s contributory infringement possible. According to the complaint, Big Red committed contributory copyright infringement when it posted Flaherty’s Alamo photo on Twitter and Facebook, since Big Red should have known that other social media users would share the infringing post.

    Even though the social media users’ re-tweeting and pinning might technically constitute infringement, Flaherty did not sue those social media users and was not referring to such social media users with the “Doe” designation. This interpretation is supported by Flaherty’s description in the complaint of the “Does” as the “agent, affiliate, officer, director, manager, principal, partner, joint venture, alter ego, hired contractor, and/or employee of” Big Red or its corporate subsidiary.

    So, at least for the moment, there appears to be no pending lawsuits against innocent online bystanders who re-tweet, like, and similarly share.  (Flaherty and Big Red did settle and the case was dismissed on August 12, 2015. )

    (NOTE: This posting previously incorrectly reported that NJMG and Fox settled the dispute after Fox’s failed summary judgment motion attempt. While the parties reportedly came close to settlement, those discussions ultimately proved unsuccessful.)

  • Fair Use Explained in 50 Words?

    A Fair Use Challenge

    I am quoted in a Forbes article regarding how authors and writers can rely on copyright fair use when citing other textual works in their books and articles. The Forbes writer challenged me to provide a 35-50-word fair use rule of thumb to which authors and writers can refer when quoting other works.

    A Rule of Thumb for Fair Use

    Although I exceeded the desired word count by nine, here’s what I offered as a rule of thumb:

    Use the quote for purposes of commentary, news reporting, or parody – though that need not be the primary purpose of your entire article or book. Quote as few words as possible to make your point. Note your fair use chances increase when quoting a factual work like a history rather than a highly creative work like a science fiction novel.

    Caveats for Any Fair Use Rule of Thumb

    Qualitative; Not Quantitative.  Fair use is not a quantitative test. It is a qualitative test. There is no bright line rule in determining what qualifies as fair use such as 250 words of text or 8 notes of a song or 10 seconds of a film.

    Specific Circumstances Matter.   Instead, whether or not a particular use qualifies as a fair use depends on the specific circumstances of the use. Hence, there are certainly uses that do not meet all the criteria stated in my rule of thumb and still qualify as a fair use.

    Fickle.   Fair use is often fickle and we cannot always answer with 100% certainty whether a particular use is a fair use. In those circumstances, authors have to evaluate the riskiness of citing the material without a license and how much of that risk they and their publishers are willing to accept.

    You can read the full Forbes article, “What is Fair When it Comes to Fair Use?", by Henry DeVries here.

  • $2.7 Million Is Price Tag for Mixing a Contest and a Sweepstakes. Just Ask Ironman.

    The Illegal Lottery Problem

    Prohibiting illegal lotteries is an underlying principle of the laws regulating contests and sweepstakes. An illegal lottery is what you may very well produce if your prize promotion mixes

    • the element of chance also known as luck – which is permissible for a sweepstakes
    • the element of consideration also known as money and other stuff that holds value – which is permissible for some contests

    In my list of 10 Common Legal Mistakes for Contests and Sweepstakes Promotions, mistake number one is “Inadvertently Offering an Illegal Lottery or Gambling Game”.

    Ironman’s Sweepstakes/Contest Mix-Up Leads to $2.7 Million FTC Penalty

    WTC runs the annual Hawaii-based Ironman World Championship. People who did not otherwise qualify for the Ironman could purchase a $50 ticket for a chance to win entry into the triathlon via a random selection process.

    Do you see the problem with that structure?

    In the eyes of the U.S. government, that structure combined consideration (the $50 ticket price), chance (the random selection), and a prize (entry into the triathlon). Those are the three ingredients for an illegal lottery – an activity that carries both civil and criminal penalties.

    The WTC promotion snafu prompted the U.S. Attorney’s Office to file a complaint against the organization. As part of settling the complaint, WTC forfeited to the U.S. government all the proceeds earned from the Ironman lottery since 2012 ($2,761,910). WTC did not admit any criminal, civil or other wrongdoing as part of the settlement.

    Transforming an Illegal Lottery into a Legal Contest or Legal Sweepstakes

    While combining prize, chance, and consideration typically leads to an illegal lottery, offering a promotion with only two of the three typically gets you out of illegal lottery territory. The Ironman promotion might have been a legal prize promotion had WTC eliminated consideration by not charging a fee for the ticket or eliminated chance by awarding the prize based on a skill.

  • Making Defamation Disappear: Turning Libelous Statements into Libel-Free Statements

    What Is Defamation?

    You defame someone when you make a false statement about the person and the statement harms the person’s reputation. The defamatory statement is libel if written and slander if spoken.

    Reducing the Risk of Defamation

    To be defamatory, the statement must be false. A truthful statement – even if unflattering – is not defamatory. Therefore, even when making controversial or potentially offensive statements, you can reduce the risk of a libel claim by focusing on the raw facts.

    When doing a full pre-publication or libel review (also called vetting) of an article, book or script that is an exposé, I make word and editing suggestions designed to make the piece a more objective reporting of events and, thus, less likely to be libelous.

    Here are illustrative examples of word selection changes that reduce libel risk:

    DO NOT refer to John as Nick’s accomplice in an activity that did not result in a criminal arrest, charge, or conviction. INSTEAD refer to John as working with Nick on the activity.

    DO NOT say John sabotaged the process (if John’s actions are not criminally or civilly actionable). INSTEAD say John opposed the process by {description of John’s actions}.

    DO NOT say John misrepresented the process. INSTEAD say John misstated the process or John made an inaccurate statement {followed by a factual explanation of how John’s statement was inaccurate}.

    DO NOT say John falsified claims. INSTEAD, say John made claims that did not withstand scrutiny.

    DO NOT refer to a blog as a hate blog. INSTEAD, refer to the blog as a blog that is critical of {subject}.

    DO NOT say Attorney Smith’s argument to the District Court begins with a list of poorly researched items accusing . . . INSTEAD, say In trying to convince the court, Attorney Smith used a list of items that were inaccurate or used out of context.

    DO NOT refer to Mr. Smith’s years of stonewalling INSTEAD, refer to Mr. Smith’s delays in sharing the requested information.

  • How a Rights Clearance Company Differs from a Rights Clearance Lawyer

    What is Rights Clearance?

    Clearing rights means verifying that nothing in your book, film, artwork, advertisement, music, or other creative production is going to get you sued or halt distribution of your work. Other names for the rights clearance process include licensing, getting permission, and media clearance. Find a more complete definition of rights clearance here. Learn five reasons why every creative producer should conduct rights clearance here.

    To conduct rights clearance, you might enlist the aid of a rights clearance house and/or a rights clearance attorney. While there might be some overlap, their functions are mostly distinct. Lawyers provide the legal analysis component of rights clearance. Rights clearance companies specialize in the hands-on aspect of clearing rights (e.g., tracking down and contacting rights owners to secure permissions). It is often more cost-effective for producers to retain a rights clearance house rather than an attorney for the hands-on aspects of clearing rights.

    Services a Rights Clearance House Might Provide Include the Following:

    • Review your television or film script for mentions of real people, locations, products, companies, organizations, or protected works; flag those mentions for legal review; and sometimes suggest fictional names to replace the real names (script clearance companies provide this service.)
    • Research and suggest specific materials appropriate for your production (e.g., image researchers or picture researchers locate suitable photographs and visual images for your production)
    • Identify and locate rights owners of the music, quotes, images, film clips, etc. you want to use in your production
    • Contact the rights owner and request permission for you to use music, quotes, images, film clips, etc.in your production and negotiate the license fees for those permissions
    • Research and prepare a report on the copyright history of a particular work. A lawyer can then use the copyright report to determine whether or not the work is still copyright-protected.
    • Research the proposed title of your production and prepare a title report listing any other uses of that title. A lawyer can then use the title report to determine whether your proposed title is available for use on your production.

    Questions a Rights Clearance Attorney Might Answer Include the Following:

    • Whether you can rely on fair use when using quotes in your book or film
    • Whether you must obtain permission before incorporating certain footage, images, film clips, real names, music and events into your documentary or parody film
    • Whether your film or television production can include footage of individuals who have not signed personal releases
    • Whether a particular work is in the public domain or is still protected by copyright
    • Whether a television commercial complies with false advertising laws (i.e., Federal Trade Commission Act, FTC Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising)
    • Whether a production includes statements or other materials that are libelous
    • Whether a specific title is available for use for your film, television show, book, etc.

    A rights clearance attorney will often be asked to provide opinion letters on all the above which producers might then use to acquire distribution and errors and omissions insurance

  • 10 Common Legal Mistakes for Contests and Sweepstakes Promotions – Part Two, Nos. 6 – 10

    This is Part Two of a two-part blog posting outlining ten legal pitfalls to avoid when sponsoring a contest or sweepstakes. See Part One for legal pitfalls, numbers one – five. Here are numbers six – ten.

    6. Taking Online Entries from Children in Violation of Privacy Laws.

    Accepting entries from children in an online contest or sweepstakes requires compliance with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), applicable to children under thirteen, as well as compliance with state privacy laws, some of which apply to all minors under eighteen.

    COPPA compliance requires parental notice and consent before collecting personal information from children under the age of thirteen. Personal information one may not collect online from a child without parental notice and consent includes name, email address, physical address, image of child, and other information. Federal regulators take kids’ privacy rights very seriously and have issued fines of up to $3,000,000 for COPPA non-compliance.

    There are FTC-sanctioned workarounds – known as the one-time contact exception and the multiple-time contact exception – that let sponsors of online promotions collect certain personal information from a child before obtaining parental consent.

    7. Using Entrants Names, Images, and Materials without Permission

    Sponsors should obtain permission prior to using the names and pictures of winners and entrants in any advertising and marketing materials. Sponsors can often obtain such permission through their official rules or through winner affidavits.

    In the worst case scenario, failure to obtain such permission can result in a right of publicity lawsuit against the sponsor. Review this cautionary tale of a sponsor who did not obtain the necessary permissions.

    8. Ignoring Email Solicitation Laws

    Sponsors planning to use email as part of their promotions must comply with the federal anti-spam law, CAN-SPAM, and with other state anti-spam legislation. These concerns are relevant for promotions that include Refer a Friend or Forward to a Friend features.

    9. Failing to Protect Itself from Potential Mishaps

    Ideally, sponsors should structure and administer their contests and sweepstakes in a manner that minimizes the risks of problems from printing and other inadvertent mistakes, winner disputes, ties, copyright issues, public relation mishaps, and fraud. For complicated promotions, these are areas in which a competent contests and sweepstakes attorney can be valuable.

    10. Ignoring Tax Issues

    Contests and sweepstakes winners must pay taxes on the prizes they win. The sponsor of a promotion offering an expensive prize such as a car should consider the tax implications on the winner and might consider other prize alternatives that do not trigger a significant tax obligations for the winner. Also, for any prizes valued at over $600, the sponsor must make an informational filing with the IRS (and potentially state tax regulators).

    For More Information on Contests and Sweepstakes Law

    Contests and Sweepstakes Law: A Guide Through the Legal Jungle Practice Manual provides marketing, business, and legal professionals with understandable answers and guidelines to their questions about contests and sweepstakes law. This 498-page book provides best practice suggestions for maximizing the operational success of contests, sweepstakes, and promotions while minimizing the risk of legal problems. It includes an overview of federal law as well as a separate, detailed legal synopsis for each state. Get a complimentary 40-page excerpt of the book here.

  • 10 Common Legal Mistakes for Contests and Sweepstakes Promotions – Part One, Nos. 1 – 5

    Contests and sweepstakes must comply with an assortment of federal and state laws, regulations, and rules. In this two-part blog posting, I outline ten areas of contests and sweepstakes law featured in my book on Contests and Sweepstakes Law (Get a free 40-page excerpt of the book here).

    HERE ARE LEGAL PITFALLS TO AVOID WHEN SPONSORING A CONTEST OR SWEEPSTAKES:

    1. Offering an Illegal Lottery or Gambling Game

    Many laws relevant to contests and sweepstakes focus on preventing the promotion from being an illegal lottery or illegal gambling game. A lottery combines the three elements of chance, prize, and consideration.

    To avoid being a lottery, a legal contest or sweepstakes may have only two of these three elements. Sweepstakes have the elements of chance and prize. Contests have the elements of prize and potentially consideration. (Read why non-profit raffles are the exception to this rule and why raffles are promotions that may combine all three elements of chance, prize, and consideration.)

    What qualifies as chance, consideration, and a prize is not always straight-forward. As a result, sponsors sometimes inadvertently structure their promotions in a manner that turns their otherwise legal contest or sweepstakes into an illegal lottery or gambling game.

    2. Failing to Provide Entrants with Complete Rules

    I often see the statement that all contests and sweepstakes must have official rules. This statement is not completely accurate.

    There are certainly circumstances in which sponsors are legally required to have official rules and to make those rules publicly available. For example, promotions requiring rules include a promotion in which the sponsor uses direct mail, a promotion offered by a broadcast station, and a promotion offered on a social media platform requiring rules.

    There are many types of contests and sweepstakes and there is not one general law that requires written rules for all of them. Hence, in some circumstances, having published promotion rules might not be legally required. Nevertheless, it is always a good idea for a contest or sweepstakes to have written official rules.

    Promotion rules serve as the contract between the sponsor and each participant. Well-written rules are one of the sponsor’s best defenses to complaints from disgruntled entrants, inquiries from government regulators, and promotion mistakes.

    3. Making the Official Rules Hard to Find

    Consumers interested in the promotion should be able to obtain or access a copy of the rules with ease. Sponsors of online promotions should not require a social media connection or other like-gating techniques as a prerequisite to seeing the complete official rules.

    4. Diverging from the Official Rules

    To obtain the maximum value from written official rules, the sponsor must adhere to them. A sponsor’s failure to follow its own rules can lead to accusations of fraud, lawsuits from entrants, and negative interest from state attorney generals.

    5. Offering an Invalid Free Alternative Method of Entry (AMOE).

    The “no purchase required necessary” language means that entrants in chance-based sweepstakes must be able to participate without making any payment. If, for example, consumers are automatically entered into a sweepstakes when making a purchase, the sweepstakes sponsor must also offer an entry method that requires no purchase – often referred to as a free alternative method of entry, or AMOE for short.

    Sometimes sponsors do not realize their contest or sweepstakes requires payment (referred to as consideration in the promotions law context). While money qualifies as consideration, consideration is not limited to money. Other factors that might qualify as payment or consideration include the following:

    • Requiring significant effort or personal information from entrants
    • Requiring participants to submit entries of original photos, videos, and other original content (depending on the structure of the promotion)
    • Accepting entries via text message
    • Restricting entry to paying customers

    PART TWO OF THIS BLOG POSTING INCLUDES MISTAKES SIX – TEN.

  • Copyright Registration for Your Podcast

    This blog posting uses the term podcast; however, these guidelines for copyright registration apply to any original audio recording you produce.

    Submit Your Application Electronically or On a Paper Form

    You can register the copyright in your podcast as a basic claim using the Copyright Office’s online registration system or using a paper application form available from the Copyright Office’s website. Online registration is less expensive and has a faster processing time.

    Determine Which Elements of the Podcast You Own

    Your podcast potentially consists of two separate copyrightable elements. There is a copyright in the recording and a copyright in the underlying material (assuming the underlying material qualifies for copyright protection).

    For example, suppose you write and develop a seminar on woodworking and then record a podcast featuring that seminar. There is a copyright in the seminar content you developed. There is also a separate copyright in the podcast recording of the seminar.

    If you are the producer of the podcast but did not create the underlying content, claim ownership only in the sound recording. If you are also the owner of the underlying material, you may claim ownership in both the sound recording and the underlying material. By registering the underlying work and sound recording together in one application, you pay one filing fee instead of two.

    More Resources on Copyright Registration:

    How to Copyright Protect Your Work. Part One.

    How to Copyright Protect Your Work. Part Two.

    Copyright Protection for Internet Content. Part One. – Some Basics

    Why You Must Check the Status of Your Copyright Registration Application

    The Cyber Citizen’s Guide Through the Legal Jungle includes a sample of a completed copyright registration application for a podcast with explanatory notes.

  • Free 40-Page Excerpt of Contests and Sweepstakes Law Book

    Download a complimentary 40-page excerpt of

    Contests and Sweepstakes Law
    A Guide Through the Legal Jungle Practice Manual

    Contestexcerpt

    Book Highlights

    • Detailed discussion of contests and sweepstakes laws, rules and regulations by state
    • Extensive table of contents, an annotated checklist, and cross-references facilitate skimming and locating specific information quickly
    • Best practice suggestions for
      • official contests and sweepstakes rules
      • social media and online sweepstakes and contests
      • use of public voting
      • avoidance of copyright and rights clearance problems
      • compliance with state raffle and bingo laws, regulations, and rules
      • prize awards of real estate, travel, and luxury items
      • use of direct mail and telemarketing
      • children as participants
      • fantasy league sports competitions
      • collaborations with non-profit organizations and charitable causes

    Attorneys and Legal Professionals, use the book to jumpstart your legal analysis and save hours of research time with the synopsis and citations provided for United States federal law and the laws of each state.

    Marketing and Business Professionals, use the book to get comprehensive contests and sweepstakes legal information. Maximize the efficiency of your interactions with your contests and sweepstakes lawyer by identifying the components of your promotion that require legal review.

    MORE DETAILS:

    Contests and Sweepstakes Law: A Guide Through the Legal Jungle Practice Manual. Authored by Joy R. Butler, Published by Sashay Communications, ISBN: 978-9672940-6-3, 498 pages, hardcover, trim size 6 x 9, retail price $225.

    The Complete Book is available for purchase at the book website and at online and retail bookstores including amazon.com and barnes & noble. Free 40-page excerpt is available here.