Speaker 1: Max Levine from the Law Offices of Max Levine, super stoked because today we kick off a series of videos about five to ten minutes each on copyright law. As always, these videos are not legal advice and today we're keeping it very simple. We're simply asking why should you even care about copyright law? And spoiler alert, the answer is because it can definitely get you paid, okay? I want to thank, before we get into anything, RJ Deed, who runs the Content Factory Media Group and his awesome community at Choose to Create Fort Lauderdale, we'll have links to them below. They asked me to give a talk on copyright law to this community of content creators, photographers, videographers, and this series of videos is basically just going to slice and dice the conversation we had there and expand upon it. So today is again, why should you even care about copyright law? And this boils down basically to like three and a half questions, okay? Question one is, do you make stuff that copyright law applies to? Question two is, do you own that stuff? Question three is, okay, let's say you make it and you own it, what can copyright law do for you if that's the case? And question three and a half is, okay, regardless of what I do, if I use other people's stuff that's subject to copyright law, what could happen to me? And that's what we're going to address today really, really quickly. Okay, so question one, are you making stuff that copyright law applies to? We're going to expand on this in the next video, but you writers, photographers, videographers, musicians, you all know you make stuff that copyright law applies to, but the categories are actually very broad, okay? So copyright can protect graphic design. If you have coaching materials, you write them down, they're in video, those can be protected by copyright law. Tutorials, online courses, your Instagram posts, pretty much any photograph you take can be protected by copyright law, same with a video. Generally speaking, if it's a thing that you create, if you created it, and if it's a specific thing, so not a general idea, not a fact, not an invention or a process, if it's a specific thing, if it's fixed, there's a very good chance that copyright law applies to it. And again, we're going to talk about this a little bit more in the next video. The next question is, okay, so you make stuff that copyright law applies to, do you actually own the copyright in that stuff? And I get this all the time, oh, but Max, I make my content for my clients, don't they own the stuff that I make for them? Stop it, okay? Yeah, we're going to get into that. There's issues there about assignments and licenses and work for hire and collaborations, kind of the starting point for all of copyright law is that the author of the work, which means whoever makes it or whoever's really, really in charge of making it, is the initial owner of the copyright. And then by agreement, you can transfer that or you can license that. And again, in some cases you have work for hire issues, but the general rule is whoever creates the work is the initial owner of the copyright. Now the question is, what can copyright law do for you? Let's say you made the stuff and you own the stuff and copyright law applies to it. Obviously you hear the word infringement a lot. Copyright law means that you get to control or restrict or charge for the use of certain things called exclusive rights, like reproducing your work, publishing it, reusing it, making derivative works. There's these things called the exclusive rights and we'll get into that. But most importantly, it means that you get to control the use of your work. And if you do some basic things right, copyright law is a hugely powerful business tool, okay? And I'm going to give you some examples of how copyright law can get you paid. Let's say you do those things right, and we'll talk about what they are. You have a client who hired you to produce some work and the client doesn't pay the last invoice. You've already delivered the work. Let's say you did those things right. Guess what? There's a good chance I can get you paid on that last invoice. In fact, if they're really not paying that invoice, there's a good chance I can get you paid more than that last invoice if you did those things right in terms of copyright law. Let's say you did those things right. You made an image. Some random guy on the internet is now using your work, is using that image commercially or in some way that you didn't approve of. Guess what? If you did those things right, there's a really good chance you're getting paid. Let's say you make some images, a video, some coaching material. It's not really a big deal in your life, but at some point during your lifetime or even 70 years afterwards, that work becomes commercially or socially valuable in a way that you didn't foresee at all. If you took those copyright steps and did the right things, guess what? There's a really good chance that you or your children or your grandchildren are getting paid. This is real serious stuff. This happens. It's not some kind of abstract legal concern that it doesn't occur. Federal courts order the payment of hundreds of millions of dollars in copyright damages every year. I think that number is not even including out-of-court settlements, which I'm sure are huge as well. That number often adds up into the billions of dollars in a single year. Conversely, if you don't get those things right, you really cannot benefit from the protections of your work that copyright law offers. Finally, let's say you do or don't create work that's subject to copyright. You do or don't own that work, but you use someone else's work with or without their permission. Now, if you are doing it outside of the scope of their permission, if they did those things right, guess what? There's a really good chance that you're doing the paying. You take someone's image, you repost it in a way that you do not have permission to. No joke, I think right now Dua Lipa, Snoop Dogg, and Ariana Grande are all being sued for reposting other people's work on social media. The way copyright law works is that there's a really good chance they're paying out. Even though they have all the lawyers in the world, there's a really good chance they're paying out on those copyright claims because that is just the way copyright protects the work of the people who actually own the rights to those works. If you create work that may be protected by copyright law, or even if you use work that may be protected by copyright law, stick with us. We're creating a lot of videos here that will be very educational and I think very useful for you. So again, Max Levine from the Law Offices of Max Levine, Talking Copyright. Stick with us.