On this episode I talk all about the legal and copyright issues you may come across when producing a podcast and how to avoid them.

Welcome to podcast answers. That's right. This is the show where I help people start

and grow their podcasts, answering any podcasting questions along the way. That's right. We

are back with a new episode. Happy Thanksgiving to everybody who is in the U.S. I hope you're

spending some time with your families. And if you're talking about podcasting and you're

thinking about starting a podcast, I can help you do that. I provide consulting for podcasting

and full service options from editing to posting to promoting whatever you need to do with

your podcasts. I do it. And so if you're with your people this weekend for Thanksgiving

and you start talking about podcasting, because you know, who doesn't start about talking about

podcasting when they're hanging out with their family? What else do you have to do? Right?

I mean, eat turkey, talk about podcasting. If you want to start a podcast, I can help

you podcast answers.com slash contact is the place to do that. Because again, I want to

get everybody started a podcast because podcasting is fun. So today, though, we are talking about

navigating legal issues and just and copyright issues. So we're talking today, when you start

a podcast, there are things that you need to think about because you could get into some

major trouble if you don't take those things into consideration. And so first thing we're

going to be talking a little bit today is about music. And that's going to be, you know,

you may be tempted to put things like ACDC back in black on your podcast, but I would

not recommend doing that because you will get in trouble for it. You may think no one's

going to be listening to it. And you may think that you don't have to worry about anything,

but that is not true. That is not the case. You will get in trouble for it. So there are

some ways around it. There is lots of royalty free music that you can use. One of the ones

and that's actually where I found the music for this podcast. That's the, you know, this

track here is actually something from YouTube music, not YouTube music, but YouTube has

a music selection that they allow you to use underneath your tracks and underneath your

videos. And I've been able to, I've used it for this podcast too. I am broadcasting this

podcast on YouTube currently as I, as I do it live because I like having a live podcast.

It's a lot of fun, but you can use YouTube to get some royalty free music that you can

use other places that you can use it for. Also are pond five.com. I've, you can buy a track

there. So well, one of the things that you have to watch out with the YouTube music is

sometimes you have to do attribution on it, meaning you have to listen, you have to put

in, you know, who the artist is in your, in your episode description. But the other thing

to do is, you know, pond five.com is a great place. You can buy a track. I've been able

to buy, buy a track for one of my other podcasts and you can just use it as you, as you play

your podcast because once you buy it, it's legally yours to use as long as that's what

you're, you know, as long as that you've been able to clear, clear that with pond five.

There's lots of more different websites for that too, though. You can use epidemic sound

and that's going to be a subscription. So pond five is used by the track. You go in,

you'll listen to it. You say, Hey, I want to, I want to buy this track and you buy the

track and you're able to use it with pond or with epidemic sound. That's a subscription

and you get basically pay a monthly subscription. And as long as you're paying that, you can

continue to put tracks from their library into your podcast and listen and have that

as your sounds. And, you know, you can change that up if you want to do a different sound

for tomorrow. You know, next episode, you can change that episode up. You change that

artwork up from epidemic sound. And so again, that's a subscription, but it clears you.

What you do with epidemic sound is you, you clear channels. So you say YouTube, I want

to clear my YouTube channel so that that way they know when, when someone or YouTube's

algorithms report it, that you're clear to use it because you have a subscription. So

again, music is one of the big things that we have to think about royalty free. I would

stay away. You know, I've heard things where people say I can use it fair use. I'm going

to play 10 seconds of, you know, ACDC black and black. And I just would not do that because

you're going to get, you are going to get copyrighted every time and you don't want

to do that. You don't want them to take that down. And so you're definitely going to want

to, to not use anything under the guise of fair use just because that's something that

I would stay away from. Now the next thing that I would, I would warn you about is having

your guests sign a release form. So yes, you may have your guests come on and your guests

may say, yes, I want to be on your podcast, but then next, you know, a week from now,

they may come back and say, no, I didn't really like that or I don't give you permission for

it. And they can take you to court on that. And so I would have them sign a release form

and that way they can, they are held to, you can take, that's a legal contract you can

take and say, no, you've signed this release form that I own this media. You did, we're

a guest on my show in no, there was no exchange of anything for it, value for it, but you

were a guest on my show. And so that allows you to say, no, you've released that episode

and what you've set out. Now some people take that a step further and say, you know, I'm,

I will edit it and you can listen to the podcast before I release it. But for me, what I do

is I have people sign my release form, which basically says anything that you've said on

the show can and will be on the show. Now I usually tell them afterwards, if you decide,

you know, right after the show that you shouldn't have said that, that it's okay to go ahead

and contact me. I will edit it out as long as it's before the release of the episode.

So have them sign a release form. And then what I would do is also on your own edit out

anything that you think might cause legal issues. So let's say your guest said something

that later when you're editing set, you say, I don't know legally if I should put that

in my show because it's just some, there's just a little bit of controversy on it or

it may come back to bite me. So like you as the editor have the right to edit those things

out and you, you should, if you think it's may cause legal issues because you as a publisher

can be held responsible for it. Now, if you are contacted later about an episode, consider

it taking it down. I had one in one of my podcasts where a previous guest came in and

said, you know, I would really appreciate if you would take this episode down because

of XYZ. And so I considered it. I said, you know, I'm your friend. We were friends and

I care about you because if I didn't take it down, yes, I didn't legally have to take

it down, but I took it down because I care about the person and I didn't want them to

get hurt over what was said in the podcast. Yes, they were responsible for what they said,

but ultimately I cared more about my friendship. And so I took that episode down. So again,

consider that it's not that big of a deal. If later you need to come back and take an

episode down. Now be careful for what you say to in your podcast because you could be held

liable for things that you say and liable is basically where you say a way that you

publish a false statement and it's damaging to a person's reputation. So let's say you

said something about a famous person and it was a false statement and damages their reputation.

They can come back and sue you for liable. And so just make sure that what you're talking

about, you can't be held liable in any way. Make sure that you have 100% true statements

and don't say anything that could be damaging to a person's reputation, even if you think

it may be true because you can be held responsible for that. Now the last thing that I would

say you need to be careful with as far as legal issues go. And again, all of these things

are coming from me. I am not a lawyer. And so I don't know what you can and can't 100%

be sued on because I'm not a lawyer. And I will give you a recommendation on a lawyer

that's good with podcasting in case you want to one or need one. But the last thing that

I would say to consider is in naming your podcast. Don't use products or company names

in the title of your podcast unless you are that company. So don't call yourself the Coca

Cola fan club. Even if you say the Coca Cola fan club or the unofficial Coca Cola fan club

or whatever, I would be cautious of how you use things in your name because those companies

can come back and sue you if you are not the owner of that trademark, that copyright, that

name. So I would just be super careful with that. And then also search for other podcast

names that are like yours. Now, this is not 100% legal. You can still use the name, but

be careful because make sure it's not copyrighted. So if somebody has a copyright on the name,

don't use it. Like I wouldn't try to use something like maybe podcast answers or dudes and dads

podcast, which is my other podcast, because it's kind of a specific name. But you can

use things like let's talk or let's talk about it or real talk. Those are, but the one thing

you have to know about those is lots of podcasts have let's talk or real talk or let's get real

or let's talk or things like that. So your podcast isn't going to stand out because it's

going to be hard to find because if I search for let's talk about it, 150 other shows are

going to come up and those may or may not be yours. So you do need to be careful about

naming your podcast because you don't want to put a product name in there, but you also

want to not use a name that's so generic that people aren't going to find your podcast.

So those are the things that I would say that you need to consider about when you're thinking

about the legal issues of your podcast. And again, this is not a hundred percent exhaustive

list, but these are just some things that I thought of about legally and copyrighting,

you know, copyright issues that could come into play in your podcast. So with that though,

I did say that I was going to recommend a podcast lawyer and that person is Gordon Firemark

and Gordon is a lawyer, but he's also specializes in podcasting topics. He's a podcaster himself.

And so he's very, very familiar with issues that can come up to podcasters. In fact, he's

the one that kind of gave me the template that I use for the podcasting and released form

for my guests. And this is a generic thing. He didn't give it specifically to me, but

he had it on his site. And so I used it because I wanted to cover my basis on my guests to

make sure that I wasn't going to be in violation and then have, I wanted to cover myself there.

So I would check out Gordon Firemark. If you are, if you are going to be looking for a

podcast lawyer. So guys, I was thinking about doing something for this podcast. Would you

like to see this podcast in video form in your podcast app? Now I do post this live.

We do a live YouTube video. And I also post the video to it to YouTube after the fact.

But I do stream audio live in new podcasting apps because some new podcasting apps can

show a live audio and live video feed of the podcast episode. You get alerted in it when

your favorite show goes live. And for me, I go live a little bit early before any other

app, any other place like slow YouTube. I don't start the podcast on YouTube for a little

while, but I do normally start the audio stream early. And the reason I do that is kind of

a little bit more of a behind the scenes look into that. And so I do start that early. And

so I can do that live video also in podcasting apps. So if that's something that you would

like to see, I'm looking for some people to partner with me. It'll be about $10 a month

or so. And I can with doing that, I can provide live video while recording in some of the

podcast apps. If you want to help provide that, get in contact with me. Hello at podcastinganswers.com

because I would love to do that. And then I can, I'm also thinking about starting a service

for other podcasters to use that they can stream live video to. So again, if you want

to help me out and stream this video live on new podcast apps, $10 a month will get you

there. Hello at podcast dancers.com guys. Have a safe week. Happy Thanksgiving and just keep

on podcasting.

Bye.

Bye.

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