Erin Austin: Hello, ladies. Welcome to this week's episode of the hourly to exit podcast. This week is part two of a three part series about copyright infringement basics. This week, we're going to talk about how to avoid accidentally infringing someone else's pot, copyright. Including the podcast, in part one, which I encourage you to listen to if you have not already, we talked about the consequences and penalties that can be levied against an infringer, and they include money damages as well as criminal charges in the case of intentional infringement or repeated patterns of infringement.

Erin Austin: Of course, no one is listening to this podcast wants to do that. Not just because you don't want to get caught, but because we have an ethical duty to respect each other's property and intellectual property is property. When we think about IP as inventory, which when you are an expert, intellectual property is your inventory.

Erin Austin: There is no other business that we would think that we can get our inventory for free, or that we can borrow somebody else's inventory and profit from it without their permission. That would never happen in any other business and the same rules apply when we are experts and our inventory is intellectual property.

Erin Austin: whether it's that we create ourselves or that somebody else creates, and that we bring into our business to help create additional inventory. I do have an episode about, IP is inventory. whenever throughout my episodes, if I refer to something that I wrote about or a previous episode, you can always go to my website, think beyond dot com and, search for it, usually, in the blog under the blog.

Erin Austin: There is a search function now, for those of you who know this stuff better than me, I have been looking for much better search tool. because I have so much content on my website, including, podcast that I host and then, a guest on and. All the stuff I write, a lot of free resources. I'd love to have a really good comprehensive search tool.

Erin Austin: So if you have any leads, please send them to me. Thanks. Anyway, back to copyright infringement basics. So, IP is inventory. We don't get to use other people's inventory for free or without their permission. And it happens too much when it comes to intellectual property, and our expertise, because, we can't put in our hand, you know, like bolts or, planks and things like that that we

Erin Austin: know we have to buy in order to get the wood to create a building or to get the screws to make a car. because we can access people's. Intellectual property, we can access their expertise over the Internet, and we can get it for free. You're listening to this for free. even though it is my intellectual property, you can get it for free.

Erin Austin: But even though everyone else. May say, oh, everyone's getting their initial property for free off the Internet, but we aren't because here at hourly to exit, we believe in building businesses that poor put more wealth in the hands of women and we are not stealing from each other. So, let's start with the assumption that we all want to do the right thing.

Erin Austin: That we want to be fair, let's call it the golden rule of copyright that to do on to others as we would have them do on to you. So that means it is our duty to educate ourselves so that we don't infringe copyrights due to our ignorance. Now, I'm going to make the assumption that you would never intentionally infringe someone else's copyright and that if it happens, it's Because you don't know any better.

Erin Austin: So that is what this, episode is about is making sure that we don't accidentally infringe on copyright because we don't know any better. And by the way, ignorance is not a defense with respect to copyright infringement. So how can you avoid accidentally infringing someone else's copyright and there will be,

Erin Austin: 5 steps to avoid accidentally infringing someone else's copyright. So 1st, educate yourself about what copyright is. Number 2 is doing your research before you use it. Number 3 is seeking permission before you use it. 4 is, take advantage of resources that are in the public domain or, can be easily licensed.

Erin Austin: And then 5 is keeping records to make sure you know the limits of the permissions that you do have. All right, from the top, educate yourself about the copyright basics. You need to understand what copyright is and what it protects. This will be a bit of an overview. You know, I talk about copyrights a lot, but, in the interest of completeness, we'll also just have a brief overview of the copyright basics.

Erin Austin: So, what does copyright protect? Copyright law protects original works of authorship fixed in a tangible medium of expression. So that would include livery works, both fiction and nonfiction, music, art, videos, television, choreography, photographs, sculpture, anything that is original, and that has been put in a fixed.

Erin Austin: A tangible medium of expression tangible does mean digital, by the way. So, something that's on the Internet, even if you can't pick it up and put in your hand, it's been fixed in a medium of expression. Meaning other people can perceive it without, you being there. So, if I, say this exact thing that I'm,

Erin Austin: going to talk about in this episode today, but I say it on a, the front steps of a, courthouse, on my box on my soapbox and, I don't fix it in any kind of tangible expression, Be get without recording it in any way. It's not hasn't been fixed and therefore it's not protected by copyright law.

Erin Austin: so exclusive rights that you get when you have a copyright. Copyrights are basically a bundle. You'll hear it in the singular and in the plural and it's the copyrights are a bundle of rights that the owner has exclusively. Over the use of their work, and those include the right to copy the work, the right to make to distribute the works to the public, the right to prepare derivative works based on that, such as, you translation or an abridgment or turning it into a course or creating a video out of it.

Erin Austin: to publicly perform their work. and so that would be, if I have this script and then I go stand on my soapbox, I've put it in fixed, form before I started speaking and now I publicly perform it, that would be one of the rights that I have exclusively as a copyright owner of this script, including live performances and streaming over the Internet.

Erin Austin: To publicly display their work, including display of artwork in public places and on websites. So, even if I own piece of artwork, I go to art fair this weekend. I buy the physical piece of artwork. I bring it home. I own that physical piece of artwork, but I can't. Put it online or, show it off in a museum because the copyright in that piece of artwork stayed with that artist.

Erin Austin: I only own that physical, canvas with the paint on it, but I don't own the copyright. The ability to make copies distribute copies to create derivatives that still stays with the copyright owner. So copyright notice is not required. Copyright notices that see in a circle that should be accompanied by the year that it was published and the name of the author.

Erin Austin: That is your standard copyright. Notice it is not required is not been required since I think in 1976, if I'm correct. So, assuming that you're looking at a work Is, modern the 2nd, within the last 50 years published within the last 50 years, the copyright notice is not required copyright protections at the moment of creation.

Erin Austin: And so what that means is that there is a massive amount of original expression that's posted online every day. That is protected by copyright, even if there's no copyright notice on it, even if the creator had no thoughts about copyright protection when she created it and posted it, but under law, copyright protection attaches automatically.

Erin Austin: and just to clarify that not every use of a copyrighted work without the owner's permission would infringe the copyright. So it has to infringe on one of those exclusive rights. Making copies, distributing it, making derivatives, publicly performing, publicly displaying it. So, if you're not doing any of those things with somebody's copyrighted work, then you're not infringing their copyright.

Erin Austin: So, for instance, if You're in your car singing a song, that is a copyrighted work and you are performing it, but you aren't publicly performing it. So that would not be a copyright infringement. there are some shades of gray in there. Of course, when I was originally thinking about that example, I was thinking, let's say you just did it, at the barbecue, you have a little, Talent show at the barbecue.

Erin Austin: there's that fine line between is that public? And even if it is public, who's ever going to find out? And so, I'll always be very practical. And the way I talk about copyrights and contracts, but I do want you to understand. What the strict letter of the law says. So, finally, we have the concept of fair use.

Erin Austin: that is the circumstance where you can have limited use of somebody else's copyrighted material without their permission and without it being an infringement. And, that the purposes include, you know, criticism or commentary, news, reporting, education, scholarship and research. since we on this, you know, the audience here, we're in the business of profiting from our expertise when we're using other people's intellectual property, we're typically using it.

Erin Austin: In the course of selling our services or selling, a product that we created with our expertise, we would not fall generally would not fall in the area of fair use unless, the amount we were using was, de minimis, but so yes, fair use exists, but it is a defense. It is not a right.

Erin Austin: It is a defense. To using somebody else's copyrighted material without their permission. So, the only way to arrive at a fair use determination is through a court of law saying, yeah, you're right. You used it, but we decided it wasn't so much that, it infringed their rights. And so that is fairly risky.

Erin Austin: And so, I discourage people from relying on fair use other than instances of truly demented miss, use. And if you have questions about that, of course, I've written about it, or you can always talk to me. Number two, research before use, before using any content, whether it's text or images or music or video research, it's copyright status again, just because it's online, just because you can ask that access it for free doesn't mean that you can use it, use that bundle of rights of copying, making derivatives publicly displaying doesn't mean you can do those things just because it's on the internet.

Erin Austin: And once again, the lack of a copyright notice does not mean that something isn't protected by copyright. So when you're doing your research, use reputable sources in the US, you can search the US Copyright Office, just Google that they have an online catalog, where you can check the copyright status of a particular work, you can search it by title, certainly if it's a The name of a book or research paper, by the author or by a distributor or a website owner, I consider distributor publisher website owners are considered publishers.

Erin Austin: and just note that the person who wrote it, may not be the same person who owns it. So, for instance, if somebody created something in the course of their employment, their employer would own it, not the person who wrote it. you might need to do a little bit of research to actually find out who the owner of the copyrights are versus who the writer of it was, or who the creator of it was.

Erin Austin: Uh, can also sometimes find. Licensing and use information right there with the content. if you find it on a website or some sort of online platform, most almost every website and platform these days as a terms of use or usage, rights usage section that will describe how their content can be used.

Erin Austin: some websites, you know, certainly those that host creative content, we'll have copyright notices, like some that are aggregators, specialty, websites that are, lots of articles about healthcare issues. Lots of articles about, content marketing or something, and there'll be different authors and they might have the, copyright notices right there with each.

Erin Austin: A piece of content and then some may also use creative commons licenses and we will talk about that in a minute. And then you can also use reverse image or content search. So, let's say it's an image. You're wondering who owns it there. You know, Google has a reverse image function like 10.

Erin Austin: I as well that you can search. And they may be able to find the original source of the image. for text based content, you can copy the text and put it in Google, and it may be able to find the exact match for that content as well. And therefore, information about its copyright status. Number three, seek permission, which is also called a license permission to use intellectual property is a license.

Erin Austin: So if the content is copyrighted and you want to use it, reach out to the copyright holder for permission to get a license. So any license that you get. should be in writing, and it should clearly define how you can use the material. It will say what the scope of use is, the duration of the use, for how long the license, lasts, any compensation, paying a license fee, whether it's per use or per year, or per sale, and any attribution required.

Erin Austin: And then while verbal permission is valid, you can absolutely get a verbal oral license to use intellectual property. Now, the issue with that is what if there's a misunderstanding and therefore an unintentional breach. When you have something in writing, everybody's on the same page.

Erin Austin: We clearly understand what the Parameters of our license, are and therefore we do not unintentionally infringe that copyright. So if you cannot determine the copyright status, or if you have determined that it is copyrighted, but you can't figure out how to get permission. Don't use it.

Erin Austin: That's the safest thing is to not use the content because there are so many platforms and websites where you can find, content that is either, free to use, or it's really simple to clear and get a license for it. So that would be the fourth level using copyright free or licensed resources.

Erin Austin: we're here, we'll talk about public domain works and creative common works. So 1st, public domain. So materials are in the public domain. They aren't protected by copyright, and so they can be freely used. By anyone. When we say something's in the public domain, we mean that it is free for others to use without obtaining permission from the owner.

Erin Austin: And in other words, it is no longer protected by copyright. Some creators will explicitly release their work to the public domain, and so let's talk about ways to identify public domain materials first. All items produced by the federal government are in the public domain. Note, this is only the federal government that does not apply to state or local governments.

Erin Austin: Also, in the U. S. all materials published before 1928 are in the public domain as of the year. I'm recording this 2023 and each January 1, Everything released 95 years earlier and to the public domain. So every year on January 1st, a new crop of materials enters the public domain. I'm sure you've heard a lot about, Disney materials that have entered the public domain.

Erin Austin: because, Disney goes back to the 1920s sometime, and, however, Disney does have trademarks on, their characters. So it doesn't mean you can use them. but, the copyrighted materials do enter the public domain. if you. Want to use a copy of an entire book, you want to just take the whole thing was published in 1921.

Erin Austin: You can just take it. It is in public domain. You can use it. Now. That doesn't mean you can say it's yours and put your name on it and put your copyright notice on there saying it's yours and register for copyright. You can't. It's still. Owned by the original copyright owner. It just means that you don't need their permission to use it that way.

Erin Austin: And 1, easy way to find out if something is in the public domain, especially for books. Is to check there's a database called HathiTrust. That's H A T H I T R U S T. HathiTrust. And it is a non profit that researches the copyright status of, a lot of works. And they use an expert to find out whether or not it is in the public domain, either in the U.

Erin Austin: S. and around the world. And if the entire. Item is publicly accessible on their database, then it is free to download and print and use it is in the public domain. So that's just 1. I imagine there are others. I just came across this while researching this topic of sources for public domain materials.

Erin Austin: There are definitely others. I know there is an audio book site. But I can't remember the name of Libra, something Libra Libra, like free library, that has, free recordings of books in the public domain. and during the period that a copyright notice was required, and I believe that would be, those things published before 1976, no copyright notice, then those did fall into the public domain.

Erin Austin: but any case, we do want to make sure we're doing our research before we assume anything is in the public. Next. Creative Commons. So some authors will choose to license their work under Creative Commons licenses. These provide a standardized way for creators to grant the public permission to share and use their work on the conditions that they choose.

Erin Austin: And so you will see these are letters, That usually have a little bit of graphic that goes with it. I have written about this as well. And you can see some examples of a creative common licenses look like, among my blog posts, there are 6 main types of creative common licenses. And basically, when I say that, when it says that they're standardized,

Erin Austin: Something is copyrighted. You want to use it. if it's not under creative common license, you got to go find the copyright owner and ask for a license, negotiate the license. Hopefully you're getting it in writing and having it signed when it's something that's a creative common license, then you can just rely on that creative common license that is literally attached right there on the work.

Erin Austin: And you don't have to do anything more other than comply with the. Thank you. Conditions that go with the specific creative commons license that is part of that work. So the six main types, there is the creative commons license by attribution. So this allows you to do all the things to distribute it, to adapt it, to create new works.

Erin Austin: Even to use it commercially, but the condition is that you provide appropriate credit and a link to the license and then to indicate if any changes were made and what you can do in a reasonable manner, but you cannot suggest that the license or endorses you or what you've done. So that's creative commons license by attribution.

Erin Austin: Now there's creative commons license by attribution. Share alike, so similar to attribution, you can distribute it, adapt it, build upon it, use commercially, provided that you give an appropriate credit and you must license any new creations based upon the work under the same terms. So, if you do build upon their work, let's say you use it and you use it.

Erin Austin: In your course, then you can only, distribute your course using a creative common attribution share like license. So that would be the limitation. They're creative common license by attribution. No derivatives. So you can use the work for any purpose including commercially. however, you cannot share, adapted material can't create derivatives from it.

Erin Austin: So here you need to give appropriate credit and you cannot modify the work in any way. Creative Commons licensed by attribution non commercial. You can distribute adapt, build upon it. Give it. You must give appropriate credit, but you cannot use it for commercial purposes. So, and that would include, marketing, if you're using your marketing for selling a for profit, item.

Erin Austin: So you could use it for, just purely educational purposes. but not for commercial purposes. creative commons license, non commercial share alike. and so, you can, distribute adapt, build upon it. You have to give credit, you can't use it for commercial purposes, and you have to license your new creation based on the same terms.

Erin Austin: And then you have creative commons license by attribution, non commercial, no derivatives, you can't create derivatives, but you can download it and share it as long as you create, uh, credit the original creator and you can't use it. Commercially in any way, and then there's a thing called creative common zero.

Erin Austin: So, in that case, the creator has waived all of their copyright and related and the work. They're just throwing it out into the universe to use it as you will. It's in the public domain. You can use it by anyone for any purpose without. Conditions. All right. In addition to public domain and creative commons, there are a number of platforms like shutterstock, getting images where you can get content that they have, very simple to license.

Erin Austin: They have a whole menu of ways that you can license something. You can license it on a royalty free basis. Maybe you pay. a 1 time fee, and then, you know, thank pay anything else based on the use. and there are a number of, ways that you can license images that way. I do know that there are periodicals that are similar, you know, where they have, articles that you can license.

Erin Austin: They have a whole licensing process. So it's not something you have to. Kind of negotiate on a, 1 on 1 basis, they have a process for licensing and using their articles. and so that makes it very simple as well. Make sure that you're going to reliable sources though. So, if you're on a website that says it's free and that there's no.

Erin Austin: Licensing terms on there, and by the way, that would include generative a I, a lot of times, then you need to be really careful because you really don't know whether or not you're getting the rights to use the material in the way that isn't you intend to, and make sure you always understand the limits of a license.

Erin Austin: again, those licenses will have a duration, they may have the, commercial versus non commercial use. They may have geographic restrictions. so make sure you understand that. So you don't. infringe the license well, I should put it this way when you are using that licensed material in a way that is not.

Erin Austin: Authorized in the license, that is a copyright infringement. So we need to stay within the bounds of the license in order to not be an infringer. and of course, give appropriate credit, when required. All right. So the last strategy. Keep records and stay up to date. It's important to maintain a record of all the permissions, licenses, correspondence, because you may not have something signed.

Erin Austin: You may have just done something by email about the content you use anytime you are incorporating materials. in the work that you're delivering to your clients, or that you're creating to several or 1 to many products or services from and it's not something that you created. It's not your original work.

Erin Austin: You want to make sure you are maintaining a record of all those permissions. licenses, correspondence, so that you understand the parameters of your permission. You need to keep track of expiration dates or any other conditions to make sure you stay in compliance with those licenses. establish a system for archiving them and making sure that you have evidence in the event that there is a, you know, someone says, Hey, you know, I see that you're doing this, did you get the license to this, make sure you have evidence of that.

Erin Austin: so you can defend yourself as well. So keep records and then periodically, get a refresher regarding copyright law. you don't want to. No one's trying to make you a lawyer, but you do need to kind of have an overall awareness of copyright laws just the same way that you have an overall awareness about, financial statements and things like that.

Erin Austin: we just need to be. Mindful so that we don't accidentally trip up, and this will be especially important as the law continues to evolve and the boundaries tested with respect to generative a I and then if you aren't in the U. S. be aware of regional differences. I only ever talk about U. S.

Erin Austin: laws. and there are different laws in different parts of the world. And so if you're not in the U. S. make sure you are aware of those differences. Last but not least, when in doubt, seek legal counsel. Anytime you're unsure about the copyright status of a particular work or whether or not you can use it, how to use it properly, what your, a license that you received, maybe you don't even understand the license, if it was some sort of, online license and you're not completely sure, consult with a copyright attorney, including Yours truly, so if you follow these steps, maintain a proactive attitude toward copyrights, you can minimize the risk of unintentional infringement and avoid any potential legal or ethical complications or reputational.

Erin Austin: Complications, so that's it for this week. Join me again next week, where I will talk about how to protect your material from being the victim of copyright infringement as always find me at Aaron. I think beyond IP with any of your questions. And if there's any time that there's something you have questions about something that I've covered, do not hesitate to let me know.

Erin Austin: I'm always happy to follow up. Thanks guys.