Entrepreneur

New Resource! Advertising Law: A Plain Language Guide for Businesses and Nonprofits

We're proud to announce a new legal guide! Advertising Law: A Plain Language Guide for Businesses and Nonprofits discusses key advertising laws and regulations as they apply to a wide range of industries. Created with businesses looking to comply with federal and state advertising regulations in mind, we hope this guide can help jumpstart conversations on how a business runs ads or how a business can modify ads to better comply with advertising regulations. READ MORE

Submitted by Erika Lee last modified Wed, 10/27/2021 - 5:33pm

Forbes Blog: Freelance Contributor Agreements

New Media Rights published a 6-article series all about Freelance Contributor Agreements! No matter what type of creative professional you are, it can be difficult to make a living as a freelancer.

"But don’t be too quick to jump at an opportunity to have your written work, photos, or video published. You want to make sure before you start working with the publisher that you have a written and signed contract that outlines each party’s rights and responsibilities." The series focuses on the importance of having an agreement in place if you're working freelance and producing content.

Submitted by New Media Rights last modified Wed, 08/21/2019 - 11:24am

Best Practices: How businesses can communicate with individual consumers without violating the Telephone Consumer Protection Act

Submitted by New Media Rights on Wed, 09/19/2018 - 3:40pm

Every business wants to share product or service updates with their customers to maintain relationships,build brand loyalty, and to attract new customers. But when does friendly solicitation cross the line into illegal behavior?

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Event: Vlog Summit 2018

Assistant Director Shaun Spalding is speaking at the Vlog Summit Social Media Convention on Saturday, August 25, 2018. He'll be speaking about copyright and licensing for online video creators and personalities.

The Vlog Summit is being held at the San Diego Convention Center from August 25-26th, and Shaun's panel is on August 25, from 10-11 am in room 32B.

Submitted by New Media Rights last modified Tue, 08/21/2018 - 3:32pm

Nanome launches educational virtual reality chemistry and mathematics tool Nano-One on Steam Greenlight!

New Media Rights stays on the forefront of providing legal services to those who create new ways to communicate and learn. Of course, "new media" is literally in our name. So we jumped at the chance to work with local VR company Nanome to make their VR molecular modeling app a reality.  We want to congratulate Nanome on their release of Nano-One, the first of Nanome’s suite of nano-engineering and mathematics visualization tools. Nano-One was recently launched on Steam Greenlight as Nanome moves forward to a full release.

Submitted by New Media Rights last modified Wed, 06/07/2017 - 12:15pm

Our new book: Don't Panic :) A Legal Guide (in plain english) for Small Businesses and Creative Professionals

Ever wonder what sorts of issues you may encounter as a creator or entrepreneur, and when you might want to reach out to a real life lawyer? That’s what our book "Don't Panic: A Legal Guide (in plain english) for Small Businesses and Creative Professionals" is all about. This book is designed to help you through the legal issues you may run into as a creator, entrepreneur, or innovator. We focus on issues you may encounter from the inception of your business to the moment (that hopefully doesn’t happen) you get a nasty lawyer letter for the first time. While this book is not a substitute for legal advice, it can serve as a helpful guide to preventing and resolving legal issues.

Submitted by New Media Rights last modified Mon, 05/13/2019 - 3:57pm

See you at SXSW 2016!

Thanks to your votes, New Media Rights is heading to SXSW interactive in Austin, Texas. On Tuesday March 17th at 2:00PM in room 5ABC of the Austin Convention Center we’ll be presenting our panel “Can We Just Play? The Legality of Let's Play Video”.

Let's play videos are more popular than ever, however, for many creators what's legally okay and what isn't is more unclear than ever. Come learn the basics of copyright and trademark law that you need to know to keep your videos and streams up. Also get a chance to hear from legal experts and video creators about hot topics like Easter Egg Videos, Esports and using in-game music.

Joining Art and Teri will be Wikimedia Legal Counsel and lifelong gamer Jacob Rogers, as well as Angelo Alcid attorney and writer of the Journal of Geek Law.

So if you'll be at SXSW come check it out! Don't have a badge? No worries! SXSW gaming is open to the public so if you happen to be in Austin and are willing to brave the SXSW crowds come on by! If you can’t make it, you can follow our panel on twitter using #NMR.

Submitted by New Media Rights last modified Fri, 03/04/2016 - 11:29am

USPTO/NTIA offer up practical steps to sow the seeds of copyright reform

Over two years ago when we submitted comments in the United States Department of Commerce, United States Patent and Trademark Office and National Telecommunications and Information Administration copyright reform proceedings and again in our roundtable testimony, we advised a cautious approach that avoided the collateral damage that can come with hasty reforms. The final report takes a cautious balanced approach and shows support for many of the points we emphasized including:

  • The importance of developing a flexible criterion to help judges and juries determine the amount of statutory damages awarded. Particularly criteria that: consider whether the defendant use was non-commercial, had reasonable fair use argument and the financial means of the infringer. With flexible standards Copyright Trolls are much less likely to be able to exploit small-scale defendants’ lack of sophistication and resources to extract inappropriate settlements from them. (see pg 75 of the report for some of our thoughts)
  • The need for more public education on matters of copyright law, including fair use, to promote creativity.
  • The creation of easy to read fair use best practices developed within specific creative communities by creators, lawyers and other practitioners working in that specific area to help creators make informed decisions about fair use.
  • Recognizing the importance of having a small claims copyright court to help independent creators resolve disputes that doesn’t sacrifice important copyright safeguards, like fair use, in the process.(see pg 78 of the report for some of our thoughts)
Submitted by Teri Karobonik last modified Sat, 06/04/2016 - 12:43pm

How do I find the copyright holder?

CC0- Unsplash

At New Media Rights we get quite a few questions about how to find out who owns a copyrighted work. In this new guide we’ll talk about:

  • Whether or not you need to get permission to use the work.
  • How to get permission if the creator is still alive.
  • How to get permission of the author is dead.
  • Orphan works and what happens when you can’t find the author.
Submitted by New Media Rights last modified Fri, 05/04/2018 - 4:06pm

NMR launches law school IP and entrepreneurship clinics list!

As we've written about before there's a major justice gap when it comes to creators and entrepreneurs having access to critical legal services. While we do our best to provide free and low cost legal services, we’re only one organization. That's why we’ve created a national list of law school legal clinics as a resource to creators, entrepreneurs and even other lawyers to help find other legal clinics fighting to fill the justice gap. The clinics on the list typically provide completely free or low cost services depending on if you qualify and they have the capacity to take on new issues. Check out the complete list here.

 

Submitted by New Media Rights last modified Wed, 11/11/2015 - 2:58pm

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Learn about our legal services for: App Developers, Artists & Graphic Designers, Bloggers & Journalists, Clothing Designers, Entrepreneurs, E-commerce Business People & Startups, Filmmakers & YouTube creators, Public Broadcasting producers,Game Developers, Internet users & Smartphone users, Makers, Musicians, Non-Profits, Photographers, Scholars, Researchers, and Writers and Publishers.