146. How do you protect yourself as an entrepreneur? (f. Mark Wright)
Daunted by the idea of consulting a lawyer for your small business? 📃 This Brand Therapy episode clarifies all! Brand strategists and hosts Phil and Lauren meet with Mark Wright to understand when and why a solopreneur or business owner should consult a lawyer. As a specialist in the law of blogs and creative works, Mark shares his legal wisdom on contracts, intellectual property, copyright, creative works, and so much more. A must-listen for anyone who creates online!
Episode transcription
Phil
Well, hello there, welcome to Brand Therapy. I'm Phil.
Lauren
And I'm Lauren.
Phil
And this is the podcast where we help you position, build and promote your brand. What a reach that was, you know, normally on a normal week, I have incredible range with my voice. In fact some people know me for it. Still overcoming a bit of a throat situation, that's what we're calling it for last week. Lauren did a solo episode, which by the way Lauren Moore, I appreciate you doing that. Thank you, thank you.
Lauren
Anything for the podcast. I am willing to step up to the plate and step out of my comfort zone. Never gonna do a solo episode again, but that's okay.
Phil
Don't say never, it was a great episode of focus. And that is not something that I'm an expert in. And thanks to you, taking the reins on that, my vocal cords are half here, they're half here, they're half there. But let me tell you about another topic that is not in my wheelhouse. And it's not something I should be talking about. In fact, when I need an expert on this topic, there's one person we call I say we because Lauren, you also call this person. You call this person who's on the line right now on our podcast Brand Therapy. And you in fact have never met this person virtually face to face. So there's so many new, exciting things happening right now, in this episode. And listeners, I'm not going to delay it any further. You need to meet my friend Mark. Mark Wright is on the line. He is our guest this week in Brand Therapy. And he's the smartest person I know when it comes to two things combining the internet and the law. Mark, welcome to Brand Therapy.
Mark
Thank you so much. It's a pleasure to be here. I've long waited for this day, Phil. So thanks for making my dreams come true and having an opportunity to be on your podcast. I love what you do. I’ve followed you for a long time. I mean, I try to follow you to France, Mount St. Michael, Istanbul, Peru? I mean, you know.
Phil
You’re following, right?
Mark
Yeah, I try to follow you. And I also appreciate the tips and tricks that you show you help people with Adobe Spark you did a little bit with that was kind of cool. And the whole podcastle thing. I had never heard of that before. So I appreciate the introduction. And you know, it's a great opportunity to share some airtime with you and maybe some tips and tricks for some of your followers. So thanks again for the invite.
Phil
Well, okay, maybe you and I have something in common and it is the graciousness of eagerly sharing information flowingly without worrying about things, oh, am I getting paid for this? Or is this behind a paywall? I think that you and I kind of connected over this energy and vivaciousness of life and at Everything Food we have for several years that the conference was going on. That's where we met, when I met you, I trusted you. I was like I know as my business grows listener, you're probably in this position. As your business grows, it gets to a point where, like, you probably shouldn't be the one designing your logos for designing your own website, B and maybe more underlined, to be the one making legal decisions or drawing up contracts as your business grows.
So Mark, you were the person I called you're the person I continue to call when we need help, ideally proactively not reactively, proactively in these situations. And I think we'll touch on some things today in this conversation that solopreneurs, small businesses, bloggers, creators, our peeps will really benefit from hearing. So we're happy you're here. And I guess since Lauren, you guys haven't officially met at least by voice, certainly by email. Lauren, you get to ask the first question. Okay, because that's only fair.
Lauren
Okay, great. So, Mark, my first question for you is actually more about your history and your career. So what is it that you do specifically for bloggers and small business owners? And really, how did you get to this point?
Mark
Let's take a step back in time, not quite to the dinosaurs, but almost. I did my undergraduate degree in engineering, which was kind of a cool thing, I was in the United States Air Force, and I had a chance to go back to school and get a college degree. So I did. Then I went to night school and got an MBA because I wanted more business related stuff, not just engineering. So I started doing consulting with engineering firms, which was kind of cool and fun. And then I got this crazy harebrained idea to go to law school because I wanted to work in intellectual property. Patents, trademarks, copyrights, technology, licensing, computers, internet, I found that stuff just fascinating. And I realized I would probably need some additional credentials. So I thought, hey, let's do something really crazy and go to law school for three years. So that's what I did. And I had a great time. I learned a ton, and then I kind of hung out my shingle afterwards. I'm going to start working with a lot of creators, people who were building businesses and starting their own companies. And I quickly learned that there were just so many questions and issues that would come up for someone starting a business that I thought these people need help. And most of them couldn't afford to go down to the big three name law firm and pay $600 an hour and sit down and spend 10 grand a month on legal fees. They couldn't do that. I thought there's a niche there that needs to be filled. And I thought, I'm a pretty personable guy, at least that's what I've been told.
Phil
I can confirm firm that.
Mark
Thanks Phil. I've got some skills, and I love working with the creative people. Podcasters I mean bloggers, creatives of all types, influencers, people who are doing digital video, you know, content creation, all these people, right, and I just, I fell in love with the community. I met a whole bunch of them at everything food, which is where Phil and I met had a chance to visit and connect the first time. But I went to a lot of other places and I started to speak for free, because I just loved to engage the audience and have a chance to visit and learn. And over time, over a period of years, I just kind of fell into this niche where I was working with a ton of really cool people, and they would refer their friends and other fellow creatives to me. So that just kind of grew organically, and I had a chance to help a ton of people. And sometimes I get paid, and sometimes I don't. That's okay, I have my website, thebloglawyer.com. I post a lot of free content there where people who have issues about content creation, content theft, DMCA, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act GDPR, if you have, you know, privacy policy issue, all those kinds of things that people need to know about, but they can't afford necessarily to hire a lawyer to tell them. I try to post some content and help people and then I always they come on a referral from Phil or somebody, I'm always willing to spend a half hour with somebody at absolutely no charge just to help them and see if I can find a way to move them forward on their path. Because I found that the proverbial like the Bible, cast your bread upon the waters, you know, it all comes back to me, I have lots of great referrals. I have lots of great friendships. And even though I'm not going to go to Normandy France anytime soon, I can at least follow Phil as he you know, traipses through the various four corners of the earth and say, wow, he's doing some really cool stuff. And a lot of my clients and friends are like that. And so it enriches my life.
And so that's kind of how I came to be where I am today. I still do some corporate stuff. And I still do some ugly lawyer stuff. I don't like it. But I still do some because my clients need it. But a lot of what I enjoy the most is working with people who are creating, building and starting and branding and all those neat things that Phil talks about all the time. Like controlling your brand. Phil talks about building your brand and protecting your brand. Those are the things that I love doing because the people who are involved in that space are fascinating. They're interesting, they're creative, and they're just fun people. So how could you not want to be part of that community? And so that's kind of how I ended up there. And it's what I love. It's what I do,
Phil
Even if this podcast episode ended now and it's not going to, even if it did, I'd be satisfied because my mission was this: A - listener know who to call whenever you need anything legal and B - isn't it amazing how much personality this lawyer has? I think it's amazing. I think it's amazing. And that's why we get along because I don't, Mark, and I'm sure your clients are in this business, I don't particularly like legal things. I find it boring. I find it dry. The only thing I kind of find exciting is trademark because it fits into the work that we do. By the way, funny but short I'll keep it short story. We, Lauren, were looking up trademarks for something I remember about a month ago, and it was a trademark that I think a client was interested in and it was taken and then I went to see who the lawyer had filed it, and it was Mark Wright.
Lauren
Yeah, it was Mark, right?
Phil
What a small world
Mark
I do 1000s and 1000s. I literally if you search my name at the United States Patent and Trademark Office, I have a portfolio of 1000s of trademarks I manage for my clients. It's a part of my business I really love. So you will see me. I'm very, very active in the trademark space.
Lauren
Fascinating. Okay, I have some somewhat practical questions that I feel like we need to get out of the way. Most of our listeners are either solopreneurs kind of earlier in their businesses, or they have a full time job and they're freelancing on the side. A lot of our listeners offer consulting services, whether it's graphic design, or social media support or writing or what have you, at what point in someone's solopreneur journey, should they consult a lawyer and what should they ask for?
Mark
As soon as they figure out they want to have a business instead of a hobby. They should contact a lawyer. If you just have a hobby, you probably don't need a lawyer. Just be careful, don't do stupid things, you'll be fine. But if you want to build a business and you want to take it beyond just a little side hustle hobby thing, you really want to hope someday turn it into a full time gig, then you need to talk to a lawyer. And the nice thing about it is you don't have to spend $10,000. you can spend a few $100, or even maybe less than 100. You can get a free consult from me, if you come from Phil as a referral, I'm happy to give you a plan of when you might need what you might need.
But the first thing, most small businesses, especially people who are doing independent content creation for other people, they need a contract to protect their rights and to protect the rights of their clients. This is really critical, because the United States copyright laws, who owns what and how the ownership is transferred, it's not complex, but it is very specific. And if you fail to understand and follow the rules, you can easily lose control of the content that you're creating. And you may want that to be okay, but you may want to keep control of the content that you're creating. So that's where a good lawyer who has some experience in this space can give you some really simple guidelines. Some of this, like I said, you'll find on my blog you'll find on my website, and you'll be able to understand, there are key things you have to know what to have in a contract, and what not to have in a contract, if you want to keep control of your creations. Even if you're transferring the content to a client, do you want to have the right to maintain control for a portfolio for example? If you want to have a sample of your work, to show prospective clients in the future, you need to make sure that you carve out that you have the right to do that.
So there are lots of little things like that, that people are just starting out don't know. These are smart people. These are not dumb people, they just don't know, this massive body of law has been created over 200 years in our country. And that fills literally hundreds and hundreds of feet on the bookshelf, how do you hope to know that and be the best digital content creator on the planet? Well, you can't. So I don't change my own oil in my car for example. When I was a young kid in high school, I did, I had the time and I knew enough about it. Cars are a lot more complex, I don't tune up my car anymore. It's not go in there and change the spark plugs and set the gap like it used to be when I was in high school, right? I go to a mechanic who really knows how to work on my car and take good care of it so that I don't ruin that investment.
If you're investing your time and your money in building a business, my goodness, protect it, spend a little teeny bit of time and money and figure out what you need to do. And it doesn't have to cost you a lot of time or money. But you need to put it on your to-do list to review what you're doing with your business with somebody who can help you do it, right?
Lauren
We learned a number of years ago the difference between a work for hire project and a traditional photography project. I understand just the basics of it. But I feel like it would be very interesting to hear you explain how copyright works with photography specifically, and what all the different nuances and considerations are on that front?
Mark
Yeah, we probably can't get to all the nuances, but I can give you high marks in a few minutes, right? We're gonna drill down on any aspect that you think might be interesting for the folks that follow Phil. So basically, under copyright law in the United States of America, whoever creates what we call the ‘work’ owns the work. So if you're a photographer, and you have a camera and you snap a photograph, you are the author and creator of the work being the photograph, right? So now that we know who owns it originally, how does ownership get transferred? In the United States of America, if you're going to transfer ownership of a copyright, it has to be generally in writing.
Now there's two categories where this happens. One, you're an employee of a company hired to be the company photographer, they hired you to take pictures, and two, you're an independent contractor hired by the company to come in and take photo shoots of the executives for headshots, or the company party, or whatever it is, right. So those are two separate situations. And everybody thinks work for hire means I'm paying you money so I own what you do. Work for hire is a term of art in copyright law. And it has very specific requirements to qualify as a work for hire. And most people doing photography, it's not a work for hire, it can't be under the law, the law says you have to have, you're creating a map, or a compilation, there's about four or five things that fit in the legal definition of work for hire. And doing photography for a wedding is not one of them. So what you have to do is you have to do a contract if you're going to transfer the copyright from the photographer to the person. So somebody hires a photographer to come take pictures for their corporate gig, third party, independent contractor, they come in, they take the pictures and you pay them $1,000 and you get your prints. You say well, I want I want the digital files, the digital media because I want to use them. The photographer has every right to say no, you can't have those. I own the copyright to the images, you have a license, and here are the photo images that you get to use. And in our license. I may give you additional rights to reproduce in other media, but I may not. I may reserve those rights. So it works on both sides. If you're an independent contract, you need to make sure that if you want to control it, you do and if you want your client to have some control, you specify what that is: copyright is a bundle of rights. There's four or five specific things and you can transfer them piece by piece, or assign everything. And I have a little blog with a visual graphic that says assignments and it talks about copyright assignment. It's a really handy little cheat sheet, if you will. So that's if you're an independent contractor. You created it, you own it, even if they paid you for it, you still own the copyright. You may have given them the right to use the photos you took in some way, but they don't have the right to scan them, for example, and load them up to unsplash or Getty stock images or something like that. Just because they have a copy of the photo any more than I can buy a Harry Potter book, scanning into my computer and start selling Harry Potter books. I can't do that I don't own the rights to that. I have a copy of the Harry Potter book which I can read, I can lend to a friend I can sell, I can burn whatever it is I choose to do with that copy. But I don't own the underlying copyright in the work Harry Potter. So I'm limited in what I get to similarly, with a photo, it's the same thing for copyright law.
Now, on the other hand, if you're hired as an employee of the company to be the company photographer, that is covered under a separate aspect of copyright law. Which is that you have been hired to create. And therefore you are an agent of your employer and they own the rights to what you create by virtue of the employment contract W2, W4 actual employee, that's employee employment law more than is copyright law. But that's how the employer then actually can control all the things that you create. Similarly, if you're hired as a software engineer, and you work for the company, as a software engineer, then the chances are really good, they own all the software code that you create. If you're hired as a video production person, and you're working at a studio, and they're doing video, and you're the production editor, or whatever, the work and the things that you do, are owned by your employer. If you're hired though as a third party to come in and do video and content editing, and you're adding things and creating new things, and creating a montage, or you're compiling different than you probably have copyright in the things you're creating. And there better be a contract in place, either to protect you, or to protect the person who hired you. So the ownership is clear. This is like that there's a lot of nuances, but basically, the person who creates it owns it, unless they were specifically hired as a W2, W4 employee to create that, then the employer would own it. But otherwise, the default rule is the person who creates it owns it, period.
Lauren
Now does this same copyright assignment rule apply to independent graphic designers to like if someone's building a brand?
Mark
Absolutely, that's what's really funny, you just pay the designer $3,000 to create a logo, right? Well, they can give you the logo, but they own that image, you don't own the image. You may have a license to use it for the purposes for which you have them create it, that's an implied license, if nothing else, so you can use it, but they could technically take it and turn around, take that image and sell it to somebody else. You probably don't want that if you're creating a brand unique identity, you'd like it to kind of be unique, right? So you want to make sure you own and control that. Two ways to do that, first, get the copyright ownership transferred to you from the person who designed and created and second file for a trademark registration and or copyright registration. And then that makes it very clear on legal ownership, that you are the owner of that intellectual property associated with that. I mean, here, am I sure that's the blog lawyer, right? That is my logo created by a you know, design person, and it's, I own the copyright, and I have a registered trademark. I own that. And if anybody tries to use that, or something similar, guess what? I have a legal right to stop them and make them quit. Don't be mean, don't do that. But you can make people stop if they're treading on your intellectual property. So that's why it's important to understand, take care of these things, is you want to be able to protect what you've created, what you're building.
Phil
What are some of the hairy situations that you encounter, often with your clients? What are the things that you encounter most often with business owners that maybe have businesses that are largely focused on the internet or doing business over the internet,
Mark
The number one thing I see is content theft. So my clients create a great, whether it's a podcast, a blog, or just, they have great recipes, or they've created new designs, or whatever it is that I represent a number of folks who are very creative in this space, and they have blogs. They talk about how the detailed steps of what they pay, well, we'll go out there sometimes, and we'll find an exact duplicate almost of their website, all the contents been scraped, and ported over. And the person's got it up on this new website, and they're driving traffic to their website. And now it hurts for a couple of reasons. One of the first things is when you start looking at Google search algorithms, when they find duplicate content that’s been copied over and over again, it gets devalued in the search engines, right? So Google will take a look at that and say this is not original, they'll say it's not viable or valuable because it's a Everywhere, right? It's ubiquitous. So you get devaluation of your content. And second, people get confused about whose brand is it? Who do I contact if I want to, for example, do a sponsored post with this content. Or if I want to hire this person to create some sponsored content for me, who am I reaching out to do they find this in three, four places. So it makes it really hard to clearly build your brand and control your brand. So I have to go out, find out who these people are, will typically be starting with an Instagram or perhaps with their internet service provider will do a Digital Millennium Copyright Act will do a takedown notice. And sometimes we have to go as far as initiating litigation. Usually, if I can find out who they are, I can stop them usually pretty quickly with a few letters and phone calls. Because most people once a lawyer gets involved, they know they've been caught with their hand in the cookie jar, the last thing they want is some big legal brouhaha. And sometimes I can extract money out of them for my client to help my client kind of recover from that. One of the worst situations I have had, my client creates really cool content in the home design space, home decor, that kind of thing. And she creates by hand, pillows, quilts, and then she does these really nice, beautiful photo spreads, showcasing her work and talking to people about it. Well, one of her followers said, hey, I saw your ad with a company that will not be named out there and they have your photos. Congratulations on what a great opportunity. They had your stuff on TV and in their print ad mount to newspapers in five different states.
Lauren
They just stole it.
Mark
She said, What do you mean, and they sent it to her. They had taken her picture, which is a large room with the couch and quilts and the pillows. And they've cropped it down to the couch and the pillows, and in their ad it said, come check out our pillow sale. We have all these new great pillows. They'd cropped it and reversed the image. And they ran it on TV. And they printed it that went to probably 50,000 homes, maybe 70 ,80,000 homes newspaper print, insert and the Sunday ads. And she said I didn't I didn't. And she went to a website. Sure enough, I mean his exact picture. And she said to me, she says I'm hard sick. What do I do about this? Well, I contacted them and we went back and forth and their lawyers were making excuses and blah, blah, blah. And the other day, they wrote her a fairly nice check. And they stopped and they promised never to do it again. And I think probably some people at their ad agency or whoever did that work, you know, they probably got fired. And as far as I'm concerned, that's fine. I don't want people to lose their jobs. But if they're willy nilly violating the intellectual property rights of my clients, we gotta stop that. That's probably one of the most egregious, but I've got, I've got others like that. They literally just steal the content and pretend like it's their own. And that's horrific.
Phil
So juicy, exciting story.
Mark
Yeah, I got I could tell war stories all day until your listeners are saying, stop, please no more. But what's really interesting is that happens way more than you think. There are people out there who create websites, strictly based on stolen content. Unbelievable. Yeah, it happens all the time. It's sad. But it's the reality of the world where it's easy to go to the internet, it's easy to go to someone's website, steal the content, and post it on your own.
Phil
We've had some situations, contractors take designs, copied a website from our business.
Mark
That's another thing I've seen is I've had a number of clients come to me and say, I paid a designer to do this, this, and they got a cease and desist letter, my client from another lawyer saying why are you using my clients stuff? And they don't like it, so I hired this creator to create it. And they gave me stuff they stole from somebody. I said, Well, unfortunately, you're on the hook. Because copyright law is kind of like, you either did either posted and use something that was yours, or you didn't. They don't really ask how you got to that point. It's kinda like being pregnant, you're either pregnant, or you're not right, we can discuss the nuances of that engagement. But the fact is, you're still pregnant, right? And so we have to say, well, can we really have recourse to go after the designer? And if it's some fly by night, you know, designer that you just found on Fiverr, but if you just got that out there, chances are you probably don't have any recourse against the designer. Legally you do, but practically, are you going to go after some person in India that you paid $35 to create? Yes, not gonna happen, right.
From a practical perspective, it's a non-starter, but that's where you're at. So if you're in a business, you need to understand that genealogy of your content. I call it the genealogy of your content. What's the history? Where did it come from? Who was the daddy, who was the mommy of your graphic of your logo or of your text, right? Where did that come from? If you don't know that, you're taking chances, right? Because it could be something stolen from somebody else. And you all of a sudden could be liable for copyright infringement. And you didn't really do anything wrong except, shame on you. You cut some corners and then do your homework. So that's the problem. And it's rampant. It's just everywhere. If you're running a business, and you haven't seen or heard of this, I'd like to meet you because you're like the unicorn, you don't really exist. But I'm happy to learn. So if you have some, I'm always willing to be educated. But this happens a lot. I run into that a lot with my creative clients.
Lauren
So for people who are starting their own content creation, maybe not, are working on their photography skills themselves, and they want to use someone else's photo in their blog post as an illustration or whatever. Obviously, they need to cite the original source. Are there any legal rules about using someone else's work on your website?
Mark
Yes, you can't do it unless you have permission. That's the rule.
Lauren
Oh, you have to have permission.
Mark
Yes. Just citing back to where you got it. That's like saying, I went into Fred Meyers and I stole a stereo. There's my stereo I stole from Fred Meyers. That isn't a better excuse me from stealing the stereo for Fred Meyers. Right? All I'm doing is advertising. I'm a thief. And so that's what's going on? If you post a photo from somebody else's blog, I don't care if you credit, and that's just saying, here's where I stole it from, that doesn't mean he didn't, you're still a thief, right? What you have to do is get permission. Now, there are some exceptions. So I cite unsplash, if your listeners don't know about unsplash.com, they should, I'm sure Phil, you’re all your all over it.
Phil
I just published in a YouTube video called ‘best royalty free stock photo websites’. So people should check that out. And unsplash is one of the ones that I mentioned, there's pixabay, there's a handful of them.
Mark
So you're educating your clients well. Be sure that if you're pulling in from a stock photo website, you're aware that the license is. Unsplash is very simple. You can use it for anything you want, there are no fees, you don't even have to credit the photographer, I love Unsplash. It's a great source for a lot of really cool stock images. But if you go to a stock image website, like Getty Images, for example, or Istock photo, you can't take their stuff, it may be royalty free. But all that means is you'll pay a one time fee to get a license to use it for a specific application and environment. You don't get to own the photo, you'll have the right to use it for a limited purpose.
Phil
And for a specific amount of time, right? It's not usually indefinitely.
Mark
Yeah, the license will specify if it's a one time use, if it's a period of time use, or, for example, you get to use it 20 times over the life or you know that everyone. Every site has different rules that tell the licensing agreement. And you need to understand once again, that’s part of the genealogy of your content. What are the requirements? And how do I maintain compliance with those requirements as I move forward? So really critical stuff to know. So Phil, good for you for helping point people to some resources like that. I tried to do the exact same thing so that people have a chance to see, like, I don't have the money to hire a photographer who wants nice looking photos for this blog post for this project I'm doing.
Lauren
What about regramming? On Instagram? Are there any rules about that?
Mark
Generally speaking, it's just like taking a URL, and including the URL in your, your blog post. That's generally accepted. It's linking. And rebranding is kind of the same thing as Oh, check out what this person's doing. You're not stealing their content. And there's actually some licensing language in Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, that allows you to do those kinds of things under the license that the original creator granted to the platform when they posted their stuff. So if you don't want your stuff linked to and shared in that fashion, then you shouldn't be posting it on a site like that. You should post it on your own site where you control the usage, and you have the right to, under your terms of use, tell people they can't download. They can't link, they can't whatever. Generally speaking, though, for most social media sites, it's okay as long as you take and link the entire thing so it links back to where the original person creator posted it. That's not really okay. There are a few exceptions, but they're probably too detailed and nuanced and spend a lot of time here today. But anyway, the general rule is if you see a cool article on the internet, you could copy that link and you post it in your thing and say hey, here's a really cool article about you know, digital music that I wanted you guys to see. They click that link it takes them back to the original site, and they can you know the person there's getting the traffic that's generally speaking that's going to be okay,
Lauren
Oh my gosh, Mark, I could listen to you speak for six hours.
Phil
Isn’t he just so good? And it's so nice to hear this from a trusted source. It's just so nice to hear, what is actually reflected in the law, instead of an unfounded opinion that someone read on the internet isn't actually based on anything?
Mark
I have what I call the top 10 copyright myths. It's another one of my blog posts. You can read that and learn it. One of the things that people run into too, is question I get all the time is public photography. Can I take pictures of people in public? And what does that mean? And the general rule is, if you're in public in a public space where you're allowed to be, in general, as part of the public, you can photograph anything you can see, period. And people say you can't take a picture of me, I didn't give you permission. Well, that's not true. If you're in public in a public place where I have the right to be, I can take your photo. Now, if you're in your house, in your living room, and I'm outside your house, and I have a telephoto lens, I'm kind of peering. No, I can't do that. Because you're not in public space. I'm in a public space, but you're not you're in a private space, right. So that's invasion of privacy, that's voyeurism. It's really kind of weird and creepy. So don't do that. Right? Don't do that. But if you're in a public place at the park, and you see a kid on a swing, you don't have to have the parents permission to take a picture of the kid on the swing, you can take a picture of what you can do with the picture.
So here's another True story. A woman was at Chipotle eating her lunch. And they were in the AAA advertising taking pictures of the new store, a new look, they'd rebranded AAA, and they were doing some new advertisements. And she was in the picture with her eye, she was dressed very nicely, you know, it looked like a really good customer. Anyway, long story short, Chipotle used her image in their advertising, they didn't have her permission, she was in a public space, you can take her picture, but you can't use her picture for commercial purposes, without her permission and a release. So Chipotle ended up paying her a lot of money. She wasn't my client. So I didn't do this. But I read about this kind of stuff all the time.
But that's the kind of dichotomy and attention in public photography. If you want to take a picture of that child and put it up as a stock photo at your website, you can't do that. You can't resell that image and make money from it. You could post it probably unless you're driving a lot of revenue. But if you're just doing a regular blog post, talking about this beautiful park you were at and here's some scenes from the park as your tourist, maybe you have a travel blog, right? So you're posting of this place you went to, like wherever the park was right? And then you can do that and the picture is fine and they're not going to say you have to take down that picture. Anyway, there's a lot of rules and nuances to that but public photography I get a lot of questions on that because it's a very prevalent thing where you're on the public TV to to concert take all the pictures you want. Now if your ticket says you can't take pictures in the venue, that's a different story. But like an open air concert you don’t see lots of anymore it's just free and people show up they have the people performing. I've been to lots of those as well as try to stay out of the mosh pit because that can be deadly for guy like me but you know you can take pictures and use those pictures to talk about where you went what you did your travels, how you enjoyed the experience those kinds of things you're not using it for commercial purpose that would be contrary to the law.
Phil
So good. I think people should check out that blog post that you talked about, 10 Myths of copyright people should check that out we'll link to it in our show notes and also where can people find you and get more from you. You mentioned your website where give us the URL
Mark
thebloglawyer.com it's pretty easy
Phil
I mean obviously I know that I just want to hear you say because it's just such a good brand it's just so good
Mark
The blog lawyer I mean you know that's me. You can find me there I'm pretty easy. If you want to follow me on social The Blog Lawyer that's my handle and you can mark@thebloglawyer.com you can email me so I'm trying to be consistent in my branding, something that Phil’s very, very big on and and follow those kinds of rules. And I've tried to do that because I think it's important for people to understand who I am and what my brand identity is.
Phil
I think these conversations made it very clear why we get along and I'm so happy that Lauren and Mark got to meet face to face, virtually. Mark. It's been such a pleasure. In fact, we'll probably have you back on to talk about specific things. You've given people such a great little like Starter Pack perspective, I think in this legal world that's often really intimidating with some good examples. So we appreciate you hanging out with us here on Brand Therapy. You are the best.
Mark
Thank you. You know, I love this. I first met Phil, I thought we're kind of you know, not peas in a pod. We're very different vegetables. But you know what? We were in the same vegetable family and he felt like a brother right away. So it was good. Yeah. I felt like Phil's a good guy. I can relate. I can hang with Phil. We're not like brothers from a different mother, but we're certainly relatives. And I felt like that right away to start had a very good connection with Phil. I'd love the association. Over the years, we meet at conferences where we're both presenting and speaking, whatever not so much anymore. I hate COVID.
Phil
I know that when all of that comes back, we will be together again and I look forward to it.
Mark
I do too and maybe we'll even get to go on a trip together someday. I'd like that as well.
Phil
You say when I say were.
Mark
I'll take you up on that, Phil. It'll be a wonderful trip.
Lauren
Great.
Phil
I love it
