#162: Copyright Infringement — What Writers Need to Know (with Attorney Richard Chapo)

Welcome to the High Income Business Writing Podcast, helping you propel your writing business to a whole new level. And now, here's your host, Ed Gandia. Hey there. Welcome to the High Income Business Writing Podcast. I am your host, Ed Gandia, and this is the podcast for business writers and copywriters who want to earn more and less time doing work they love for better clients. Just a quick reminder that you can find detailed show notes for this episode@b2b launcher.com episode 16 2. And those notes are going to include a summary of our discussion as well as links to resources we mention during the show. Now, before we get to this week's episode, I have just a quick announcement. I recently opened some slots to personally guide a handful of writers who already have paying clients but aren't yet earning $2,000 a month consistently. If that's you, I'd like to work with you over the next six months to get you to that level. I still have a couple of spots left, so if you'd like to learn more, send an email to ed2b launcher.com and just put the word accelerate in the subject line and I'll reply with all the details. Now, I had a friend who was married to a lawyer, and she used to joke that when she was having trouble falling asleep, she'd ask her husband to talk about copyright law. And apparently that worked way better and faster than taking an Ambien. And in all seriousness, copyright law is an important topic when you're a freelance writer, copywriter, and you're working for clients, even if it's boring. Now, I'm not an attorney. I don't play one on the Internet. So to cover this material, I brought in Internet business lawyer Richard Chapo to give us the scoop on what we need to know on protecting ourselves from the most common and avoidable copyright pitfalls. Richard is located in San Diego, California, and he's been practicing law since 1992. He specializes in helping online entrepreneurs like ourselves avoid what he likes to call crap your pants, copyright infringement letters and other threats when operating online. And I gotta tell you, as dull as this topic can be, Richard does make it interesting. He makes it relevant. He makes it. Keeps it engaging. He also illustrates many of his points with specific and useful examples which I found extremely helpful. So listen, not the most exciting topic in the world, but I urge you to give this one a listen. This is important stuff. Enjoy. Hey, Richard, great to have you on the show. Welcome.

Thank you. Glad to be here.

Well, I'm always scared when I bring an attorney on the show. It's only happened a couple of times, but we're going to be talking about some important stuff and a lot of questions that listeners ask me. So really it is a pleasure to have you on so you can help clarify some of these things that many of us are wondering about and are faced with every day. But before we get to that, why don't you give us a little bit of background about yourself, maybe a little bit about the kind of work you do, the kind of clients you work with and that kind of thing.

Sure. I've been an attorney since 1992. Worked in litigation. Initially. Back in 92, the Internet really wasn't a functioning commercial medium, although it certainly had academic applications. So I was doing wrongful death defense work for hospitals and doctors, or a patient passed away and there were claims that they shouldn't have. Did that for about 10 years, spent a year in Russia of all places, teaching, and then came back and got into Internet law. Clients are represented businesses, typically a couple writers, but nothing really ongoing. But a lot of Internet businesses, that's really my focus. You know, when I got into it in 2000 or so, there were very few laws. It was really kind of the wild wild west was the old cliche. And it's been unfortunately getting a little more technical since then from the legal perspective. And so, you know, I try to help clients by being proactive and help them avoid some of the binds and pitfalls that are out there.

Now, when you say Internet businesses, are there certain categories that you worked with a lot within that role?

You know, not really. It's kind of changed over the years. It's really dependent, dependent on kind of popular business models. But I work with everything, everybody from publishers in Japan to large, well known bloggers, to dating sites, to technical companies that have websites where they're providing not so much sales, but information on their products, where they're doing a lot of technical writings being done to try to explain how to use the product and how to deal with certain situations, things of that sort. So it kind of runs a gamut.

Gotcha. All right, so good stuff. And you know, our world, you understand what writers face. I mean, we're working with clients and we're producing work for them. And sometimes writers wonder, well, gosh, you know, what are my, what are my risks here? What are the potential pitfalls? In fact, I'm curious when we are producing as writers work for clients, I'm curious what you've seen or some of the most common mistakes we make that could get us in trouble.

Sure. So before we talk about that, let me just state any podcast on legal issues has a tendency to become a slight horror film, where by the end of the podcast you've decided it's best just to give up the profession, move into a cave somewhere and subsist on blueberries. That's not really the purpose of this. The law in these areas, there can be some scary aspects to it, but there's also the practical aspect, particularly if you're a writer and you're providing content to a company or to a client that is anything other than tiny. Anybody who's looking at copyright infringement claims is primarily going to look at your client, not you. Because for the simple reason that most people are going to view riders as not having sufficient assets to make it worth pursuing them. You know, the blood from turnip concept. So that's keep that in mind when we talk about these issues, because sometimes it can be a little scary. But in the practical real world, you don't see these issues come up a lot just for that simple reason. So common occurrences, depending on beauty of the Internet is it is singularly the greatest information distribution system that's ever been created. The downside of that is it's also trying to address issues like copyright and protection can be difficult because you run into situations where trying to determine if something is protected legally and can't be used without permission can be tough. So one of the primary, I think the primary issue that you run into with writers is really sourcing. Where are you getting your information? It sounds like a simple thing, and most writers who are listening to this are probably going to understand this and roll their eyes. But if you're going to source information from somewhere, if you're writing a sales piece or whatever, you include a graphic, you include a photo, you rewrite something that's out there. You have to be very careful about your sourcing, because if you give something to your cl.