Legal Consequences Of Podcast Cyberbullying & Defamation With Special Expert Atty. Maria Speth

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Hey, everyone. Welcome to Feed you'd brand. I'm Tom Hazard here with my co host, Tracy, and today we've got a very special guest for you, and we're going to talk about a subject that should be of interest to all podcasters out there.

Yeah, we're going to talk about podcast cyberbullying, defamation, libel, slander. We've been hearing about some of these things in the news lately, and I couldn't think of a better expert to bring on. Why don't you tell us a little bit about our expert? Because you met her first.

Did I really?

Yeah.

Okay, well, today we have Maria Speth with us, who is an attorney and with particular expertise in the areas of copyright and also knowledge on these things of, you know, digital law. Any. Yeah. And she's been an advisor to organizations like CEO Space International, which is how we met her. I think we've known you since 2015. I think. I think you also advise that organization on all of their legal website issues and things like that. Now, there's a lot more to your credentials than I could recite here, but as Tracy said, we couldn't think of a better expert to have on to share with our podcasters and our audience.

Well, she's our go to referral expert anyway. So if there was someone who said, I have this huge problem as a podcaster and I'm in the midst of something, Maria is the person we're going to send them to, so why not have her come on and do some preemptive things and give us some advice to begin with? So that's why we decided to have Maria here with us today. So really, we're talking about that topic of this idea of our responsibilities as podcasters. What responsibilities do we have to be careful of cyberbullying to be aware of and understand what the differences are between defamation, libel, slander, and anything that we might step into. Or, and this is really important because we have a responsibility to edit our shows here. That, or if someone, our guest says something, and do we have a responsibility to remove that, or are we leaving that in what are our Choices and what are our responsibilities here? So, Maria, thank you so much for joining us today.

I'm really glad to be here. Thank you, Tracy and Tom, for having me.

So that article that I sent you was an article on a conservative podcaster in Northern California, Yuba county, who made some threats against a specific health official and ended up in court over it, got a restraining order against him for cyberbullying. So that's kind of that first example where I said, you know what? I think maybe we need to talk about this, because people think that, no, that's okay. What if? So I say, hey, we gotta string them all up. That's maybe not the thing we should be saying. And in this case, this guy certainly got into some significant legal trouble over it. What is cyberbullying, Maria, and what responsibilities do we have as podcasters?

First of all, we start the entire discussion with where we want to start it as Americans. And that's the First Amendment right. We have a First Amendment right to free speech and to speak our minds, but that is not an unlimited right. It gets limited in several different ways. And two of them you've mentioned. One is I don't have a right to make false statements about somebody that might harm their reputation. That's going to be defamation or libel. And I don't have a right to make statements that could put people in harm, either emotionally or physically. And a threat to assault somebody would be. That would not be protected by the First Amendment. And when we harass somebody, it may get to the level where it becomes a crime, where it's not only not protected by the First Amendment and you could be civilly sued, but it even could rise to the level of a crime. And so for those of you who don't live and breathe the legal system the way I do, there's criminal cases and civil cases. And civil cases are when two people have a dispute against each other, and criminal cases are when the government comes after you and says, I'm gonna put you in jail. And either one of those things can happen with cyberbullying if I make a statement, whether it's on a podcast or through any electronic means. Most states in this country, not all states, but most states have specific statutes that say that you can't do that. That, number one, it's not protected by the First Amendment. So I could be subjecting myself to civil liability to get sued for it. So let's say I say something that causes you emotional distress. You can sue me for that emotional distress, but it even could rise to the level where it violates a criminal statute. Because I've said something that's considered to be cyberbullying or harassment under the statute, what that typically requires. I'm going to just get it because I'm in Arizona. I'm going to give you the Arizona version. And every state has a similar or different. Somewhat different, but somewhat similar version. But harassment in Arizona is defined as anonymously, which we see a lot on the Internet, but maybe not so much in podcasts, but we see a lot on the Internet, anonymously or otherwise. Contacts, communicates, or causes a communication with another person by verbal, electronic, mechanical, telegraphic, telephonic, or written means in a manner that harasses the person. And then from there it kind of escalates. It could be a misdemeanor. It can go up to a felony depending on how bad it is. And harassment is typically defined as you're intending to disrupt somebody's world. You're just intending to cause them to emotional distress, and you're saying things in a way that's causing them emotional distress. And that has to be somewhat objective. I mean, it can't be like, I'm super sensitive and I'm emotionally distressed because I didn't like what you said. You know, I know people take it that far. It has to be objectively. The average reasonable person would have an emotional reaction to this. So it's a reasonable person standing.

Does that only apply when it's directed at a single person? So this case that happened in Northern California that I was referring to with the cyberbullying, that was an attack on a very specific named health official. But there's lots of people out there who say those judges and those health officials and those secretaries of state, like whatever that might be, they're going out there with that rhetoric. Does that still apply if then death threats happen on the other end or something like that?

Probably not. It would be very, very difficult to tie together a general statement that doesn't target any specific person. It's not impossible. So I say something generally about, let's say, podcasters.

Why not?

Let's highlight podcasters.

I decided to go off on podcasters. I just kind of get out there and I tell everybody that everybody who does a podcast is a worthless human and they should all be strung up and they should all be killed. And then somebody comes along and actually does it because for some reason they think I'm sane. That will then go to a criminal prosecutor who would decide, is there really enough to connect my general statement with Some crazy person actually taking action. And that's gonna be very, very, very fact sensitive, obviously.

I'm glad you said that that way, though, because this is exactly what has happened with Joe Rogan, for instance. And of course, we all hear about Joe Rogan all the time. And so some kind of health advice happened on air. And his response to that was. Because it was quite generic advice, I would say, but his response to that is, I'm an idiot who listens to me. He actually said that about himself. That was his way of walking back his comments from the edge.

People do listen to him. And I think the more influence you gain in the public limelight, I think the more responsible you need to be because the more likely it is to that. Well, number one, just morally, that somebody might take what you're saying to heart. Somebody who's a little off anyway. So there's that personal and moral responsibility. Yeah. It can rise to the level where a prosecutor, a criminal prosecutor can decide to try to connect what you said to what somebody else did. That's not the norm, but it can rise to that level.

I think it may be more likely in the podcasting world, though, that somebody is just more personally offended by something you might say. And like you said, it takes a certain level to rise to maybe getting the attention of a district attorney and to prosecute you for a crime. It's probably a much lower bar for someone to be offended and sue you civilly. Would you agree with that?

Yes. So if somebody wants to just sue you for emotional distress because of something you said on a podcast, I would say that if you didn't direct your comments to that person directly, they would have a very difficult case and would probably get thrown at it. When somebody starts a sentence with can I get sued for? I like to be a little smart alec and say yes before they finish the sentence for anything. But is that lawsuit going to be frivolous? Is it going to last? I mean, if somebody tries to sue you because you made a general comment that distressed them and you didn't mention them and you didn't lie about them and you didn't harass them directly, that isn't going to go anywhere. That gets down to this First Amendment idea of I have a right of free speech and you don't have to agree with what I say and you can be as upset as you want with what I say. It's not. The fact that I cause harm is actually not enough. I have to violate some law or I have to create some sort of cause of what we call a cause of action. It has the elements like I did this, this, and this. And classic example would be lying about somebody, right? So I call out a particular person and, and I say something about them that isn't true that would cause the average person to hold them in lower regard as a result. That's classic defamation and I can absolutely not only be sued for that, but I can end up having, losing that case.

We have something here, we've kind of coined it over the years, the X's rule. That's ex, like, you know, your X, whatever. And we call it the X's rule because it happened to us pretty early on in our podcast editing production side of our business. And someone came and said they mentioned their ex wife's name on air and she got upset by it. As far as we knew when we were listening to it, it was like he just mentioned her name. There was like no, no context. It wasn't said negatively. I'm sure you're probably fine podcast host about this. However, our rule was if you want it out, it's out because it makes them uncomfortable. And so fallouts fails, take it out. That's kind of our rule here.

Obviously everybody who has a podcast sets their own rules on what is allowed and what is not allowed. Some podcasts intentionally want to be very abrasive and others don't want that. And that's really the beauty of the law here in the First Amendment. You get to set that tone and those it's your business and it's your podcast and you set it the way that you want to. Again, if you want to get out there on the ledge, it's nice to know where that ledge is and where that line is. And telling a lie is about somebody that's going to hurt them is definitely going to cross the line. And the other thing that's going to cross the line is maybe not a single statement where you say something bad directed to somebody, but a continuation, a pattern of that can become harassing. And if that person is maybe more vulnerable, like for instance, a lot of times what we see get prosecuted in the cyberbullying world is kids. Not the kids getting prosecuted, but statements about kids. When you have somebody who's targeting a child, the prosecutors are much, much more likely to prosecute that than I'm harassing a public figure. Oh, you know what? He or she is a big boy or a big girl, and they can handle it. The prosecutors are going to be like, yeah, get over it. Right? But you know, if it's a private individual. If it's a vulnerable individual for some reason. And again, how much influence do you have? How much of a platform do you have? If nobody's really listening to me, I'm not Joe Rogan, it probably doesn't matter. But if I'm influential and it's really affecting somebody's life because people are coming up to them on the street and saying, oh, are you that woman who so and so keeps talking about on their podcasts? That can rise to the level of harassment.

But, you know, I think we should maybe define a couple of these things, because you greatly defined cyberbullying. That was fantastic. And that really was help. There's a libel, slander, defamation.

We hear these terms.

What do they really mean?

Defamation is the umbrella. It's anytime you make a false statement about, you publish a false statement about someone else that is negative and harms them. Libel and slander are just two different variations of that. Libel is the written word and slander is the spoken word. And that's the only difference we have.

Somewhat both here, because many of our podcasters publish them as blogs. So we have both here. So you have the spoken word and the written word going on. And that actually comes to my next question that I had written down for me here, is basically, are podcasters technically publishers, and does that elevate their responsibilities?

That is a fantastic question. So I want to start with what we know under the law, and then we'll kind of expand it. What we know is we know that a newspaper is a publisher, and when they choose to publish an editorial, they become responsible for what that person says. What we also know is that a website is not a publisher. And a website, when they choose to publish what somebody else says, they are not responsible as a publisher. And that's under section 230 of the federal code. And section 230 basically says you cannot treat an Internet service provider, somebody who provides an Internet service, including a web operator, as a publisher of content that they did not create. Pure website world. You didn't create the content. You have a blog. You let other people post on the blog. Classic example would be Yelp. Okay, so I post on Yelp, and I either lie about somebody or I post a review that's false in some way. Yelp is not responsible for it. They're just not. It's very clear under the current law. But now let's take the scenario where I'm a guest on your podcast and I make a statement that is false and defamatory. Do you become responsible for my statement? Are you protected by section 230 or are you not protected by section 230? And that is unclear under the law. It's unclear because unlike a website that just lets people come on and post content, you have a unique ability to kind of monitor my content because you kind of are publishing it a little bit more than a website.

I'm asking the questions.

Right, you're asking the questions. You're involved in it. You easily could edit it out before you choose to publish the podcast. So I think it would be difficult for you to argue that you're protected by section 230 in the actual interview that is going on. But I would not write that argument off. I would make that argument if I needed to, because I think it's unclear under the law.

I would think that it's more likely the podcaster, the host of the show, who's in control of the content and the editing, is a lot more likely to be considered a publisher than the listening app like Apple Podcasts or Spotify or something. Would you agree with that?

Totally agree. I think that the kind of automated app where I can just record something myself is going to Very, very likely or is. Has already been determined to fall under section 230 immunity.

Yeah. And in a sense, they're only just refeeding something that is a newsfeed from somewhere else. So that, I think goes even further than that. You know, bloggers, you mentioned websites. But if I'm in control of that website, and that's actually my podcast bl, then that's not really publishing. I'm basically rewriting the words that are in my podcast so that I'm not covered as a publisher in that particular situation, then am I?

For your words, you're not. But if you let people guest blog and you let somebody post on your blog, you're not responsible for what they do.

But a guest interview is my interview of them. That still falls under the responsibility area.

Yeah. So the difference is whether you were a content provider, and actually that's the actual language of the statute, whether you were responsible for the content, not just the publication of the content, but the actual content.

We're entering such an interesting world as podcasters because in some respects, and in lots of different types of podcasts, you're entering in a world of journalism. Sometimes you're entering in a world of storytelling. So, like, we hear the stories of, like, you know, serial. The real crime stories.

Right.

Where they're telling their viewpoint of these real crime stories and Their investigations of them, and many of them are not trained in journalistic integrity in any way, shape, or form. So we don't really know those rules.

I think I would always be. My advice to podcasters would be always be clear whether your storytelling is fictional or fact based or whether it's a melding, you know, it's a. Based on a true story. We get this in book publishing all the time, where somebody wants to publish a book and they want to change some of the character names, they want to fictionalize some things, and that can get very tricky. Right. So we'll go back to podcasting. Like, I want to tell a true story, but I want to protect some people, so I'm going to change some names. Okay, that's fine. No real risk there. But maybe I want to change some facts. And by changing the facts, you could be doing exactly what you want to be doing, which is more protecting them and protecting yourself. Or you could possibly be getting yourself into a situation where somebody then, as a result, thinks you've committed defamation, because that's not the way it really happened. Right. So in real life, what really happened was this, and you just fictionalized it and said it was this, but you said it was based on a true story. So now anybody listening to that podcast thinks you were talking about me. They know you're talking about me, and they think that it happened this way. I think that puts me in a bad light or a false light, and therefore I'm going to sue you for defamation. So I would say anytime you're dealing with a true story that's sort of sensitive, it might be any issue that people might be sensitive about, really think that through. And if you're not sure, you might seek some legal advice before you widely distribute a true story that might get somebody bent out of shape enough to want to sue you.

It's interesting because what I hear from a lot of podcasters is they love podcasting as an independent, not part of some big publisher like a gimlet or something that produces a lot of different, I would say more fiction podcasts. But a lot of podcasters, they like that. It's. They're independent, it's their show. They can say what they want. They believe it's a safe haven of free speech. And to an extent, I guess I feel that it is in general because they're not having to answer to like an editorial board or something. Right. And I guess as long as they're confident that they are making statements that are truthful, they probably don't have a lot to worry about. Although I guess it's always this tricky thing. Like you said earlier, anybody can sue you for anything in the United States. So you are putting yourselves out there potentially at some risk. But the reality is, as long as you're not saying something that you really believe is not true, and then that's the wrong way of double negative. Yeah. As long as you're not repeating something you know isn't true, you should be pretty safe ground, I would think.

I mean, I think that first of all, we haven't talked much about opinion. Let's also keep in mind that opinion is completely protected. Right. So you can never get sued for defamation for telling your opinion. But some people try to couch factual statements and opinions. Like, I think he murdered his wife. Well, it's supposed to be an opinion, but that's not an opinion. I'm basically accusing him of murdering his wife. Right. In my opinion, he murdered his wife is not much better than he murdered his wife. But if it's truly an opinion, I really don't like the way he looks or she looks. I really disagree with this. That's opinion. That's completely First Amendment protected. Completely First Amendment protected. I think if you stay in the realm of opinion or if you're making factual statements, you make correct and accurate factual statements. I don't want to scare you, Tom, but there is one little danger or trap that you could run into here, and that is you may believe it's true and you may be repeating or republishing something that somebody else told you and you believe it to be true, you can be guilty of. In some cases, you can. Not guilty, that's a criminal term. But you can be found liable for defamation even when you believed what you said was true, if it was false. But it depends on who the subject is. It gets a little complicated. But if I'm talking about a public figure and I'm wrong, but I wasn't maliciously wrong, I thought what I was saying was true. Politician, somebody who's well known, then the standard is what you said. As long as I don't know that I'm lying. That's the standard. Right. But if you're dealing with a private individual who is not otherwise in the public light, and they're just a regular plain old person, you can defame them on accident. It is enough for you to make a false statement about them, even if you didn't know it was false. Because you have a duty when it's a private person to kind of do your Homework and do your due diligence and make sure that what you're saying is accurate, because we give that private person a little bit more leeway on that, because private people, they don't put themselves out in the limelight. So if you're going to make statements about them, you have a higher burden to make sure you're being correct.

So thank you for that. That was really helpful. And I'm curious about something. I'm going to make a hypothetical here, but it's one based in history, so I think we have something we can look at and maybe form some understanding of. Let's take the Flint water crisis that I think we all know a bit about. At least it made national news. Let's say I was a resident of the community before it became national news, and I was concerned. I had doubt and skepticism about the quality of the water in Flint, about my children, my family's safety, and I wanted to shine a light on it. And I decided I'm going to start a podcast and start interviewing people asking questions, trying to use a podcast to shine a light on this crisis.

Where would some of the potential pitfalls be in doing that? Or could you share with us your feeling on if there's a completely safe way to do that, to use a podcast to publish about this issue, shine a light on it, to try to get some attention on it?

Right. Well, first, I will say that under defamation law, we have something called a qualified privilege. It's not a complete privilege, but you get more leeway when there's a good reason for what you're doing. So you're calling out corruption in the government or a public health crisis. So in your example, there would probably be what we call a qualified privilege. So I would say that. The other thing I would say is your example is difficult because what we know is, we know historically that you were right. Right. So because we know that you were right, it's really easy for me to say you did the right thing and you should be completely protected by the First Amendment. So if we kind of change the scenario a little bit, and it's a new place where somebody has a concern about the water, the biggest danger you have, really, is being wrong. The biggest danger that you have is that you're trying to shine a light on a problem, and it turns out it's not a problem at all. Which is fine if you're, again, sticking to your opinion and just sticking to the facts that are accurate. But if you start accusing people of things and you're wrong about Those accusations, that's where you get yourself to liability.

So maybe if you're a podcaster and you stay in the place of observation, curiosity, asking questions, there might be an implication that there's something to be concerned about. It may shine a light on this, get more attention on it, and get people to take it seriously. But if you stay out of a place of judgment, you know, yourself, it sounds like that would be a safer space, you know, to be in.

Is that, yeah, that's a safer space. And when we're talking about a public issue like that, that's so important, it kind of part of it goes to what is your tolerance for risk? If you've got a high enough tolerance for risk, you can spill over into making some statements. You just want to have some decent background to support your statements, because you're going to have that qualified privilege. Right. So as long as your position is grounded in the facts, then you should be okay.

That kind of makes me think about the sort of big questions that we had here. And part of the reason why I wanted to bring you forward, too, is because we have a lot of podcasters in the health and wellness space, and they're finding a lot of what they call censorship on social media of where their posts are getting removed and things are happening there. And they are finding that they can, of course, continue to say what they need to say on their podcast. What responsibility do they have in providing advice in that area? Is it health and wellness as dangerous as making comments about the public health in general?

Yeah, I mean, I think that's definitely an area that you should proceed very cautiously, especially, I want to get too political here, but especially when we have governmental agencies that some would argue here. Here's me being really careful. Some would argue are sort of in the pockets of big Pharma. So the argument being, it does seem like, for instance, the Food and Drug Administration is more likely to sanction or bring some sort of claim against somebody if what they're doing might hurt a pharmaceutical company, because they do seem to be unfortunately aligned. And some would argue what I just said is defamation, but I'll deal with it.

We're talking opinions and examples here.

In my opinion, I think that there's the practical risk of maybe you haven't violated any law at all, and maybe what you've said is completely. Your opinion is supported by the evidence that you have, is not harassing anybody. You may be completely. It may fall. And check all the boxes of what Maria says you should and shouldn't do, but that doesn't mean that some big pharmaceutical company won't get bent out of shape because you're telling people to not take particular medicine or something. I think you also have to look at the practicalities of who am I going to get mad, how big is their pocket and how aggressive are they? Because it's not always what is the law, sometimes it's what's the practicalities. But putting aside the practicalities in the health and wellness space, you do want to be very, very careful that you once again are not influencing people to do things that are not in their best interest. Right? You put out a podcast and you tell everybody that they should all stop taking all of their prescription medicine because prescription medicine are evil. And then somebody stops taking their insulin for diabetes and they go into a diabetic coma and they die. You are likely to get sued for some sort of either negligence or malpractice or something, or practicing medicine without a license. There's all kinds of harms that can come of that. So I would say in the health and wellness space, you can do a whole lot of good, but you also want to be super careful, especially if you're doing anything that's not considered to be mainstream conventional medicine. Because mainstream conventional medicine kind of owns things. So you gotta be careful.

What kind of rules do we have that you hear about? The takedown rules that are takedown rules for having blogs and doing things like that. So if somebody reports, I know you know a lot about copyrights and all of that kind of side of law. Do we have an obligation if someone says, this is not true, take this down.

I need to separate again a blog from a podcast. It's under a blog. You have no obligation whatsoever even if you know it's false, right? So you've got something on the Internet. It's a website where people can post, right? So we call it user generated content. And one of your users posts something and then somebody else comes along and says, that's false and I can prove it's false. Take it down. It is your choice whether you want to take it down. And you are not liable if you do not take it down because you were not responsible for the company content to begin with. You're not the content provider. That is the current state of the law. Now there's been some talk, again, that goes under section 230. There's been some talk about section 230 may be getting modified, but under the current state of the law, even if you know it's false and even if somebody tells you, it's false. You do not have to take it down if you don't want to. I'm not saying you shouldn't, saying you don't. You're not liable for it.

But if it's your content.

But if it's your content, yes. I mean, by knowing that it's false, if you truly know it, if they give you evidence and you truly know it, you definitely increase your liability, your chances of liability, by not taking down something that you stated that now you know is false. That would be a super dangerous thing to do. And if you're in the podcast world, where you are responsible, at least in part for the content because you were the interviewer, I would be cautious if you later learn it's not true.

Let's say as a podcaster, you do publish an episode, an audio show that.

Has a statement in it that somebody takes issue with. They say that's not true. I want you to take it down. I mean, what is, I guess, the exposure? And you may not be able to answer this, but I'm curious how much exposure a podcaster would have in terms of what's the remedy? Because when I publish a podcast, let's say I have a thousand subscribers to my podcast, a thousand people downloaded that automatically. Their app automatically downloaded that episode to their phone, usually to listen to. So the cat's sort of out of the bag. It's out there. It's been downloaded. So even if I'm requested to take it down, I can. I can take it down. It's no longer publicly available for somebody new to find and download and listen to. But a thousand people already got it on their device, and it's still there. I can't remove it from it. How much trouble do I get in, potentially?

That's a really good question, Tom. So assuming that it's a factual statement that's harming somebody, let's assume it is defamation. Right? So it's more than just they say it's false, but it falls into all the elements and all the categories of defamation. Your exposure depends on a lot of factors. But the one exposure that sort of remains a constant is your own attorney's fees. Right. When you get sued and you're a defendant in a lawsuit, we live in the United States where we follow what's called the American rule, meaning each party pays their own attorney's fees. It's not the prevailing party gets to recover their attorney's fees. So you could win that case and not feel like you want anything at all, because you could Spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in attorneys fees defending the case, only to win, and you will not recover those fees. So the biggest risk, or I should say the most consistent risk that you have, is the risk of having to pay your own attorney's fees for defending a lawsuit. From there, what are the risks? It completely depends on how much harm you cost if you cause somebody to lose. I'm a concert pianist and I earn $250,000 a year. And you just told everybody that I was a pedophile and nobody wants to hire me anymore and I've lost 250,000 dol. $50,000. That's going to be your risk. Right. So if I can prove that you lied about me, that you put this out on the Internet and as a result I lost this income, you can be responsible for that income. On the other hand, you make a statement about somebody who maybe didn't have a job to begin with or didn't really get harmed by it. They had some emotional distress, but it's really hard to indicate what that is. Your liability might not be more than just some judge telling you to take it down, but you still have those attorney's fees either way.

This brings to an interesting thing that's been kind of controversial from Spotify's buyout of Joe Rogan, and that is Spotify has actually gone through and removed some of his older episodes, removed some, decided not to air them, decided to remove them from the catalog and do some things like that. And we've had to make some of those tough decisions. I'm not going to mention who it is, but we all know someone mutually who's in trouble with the feds. We had an interview with that person, and so we made the conscious decision to take that down and remove it from our catalog as well. Because, you know, whether or not they said anything specific about what's going up against in court right now, we didn't want that person's recommendations in the world when their reputation is in such question to be out there. That's a choice we made from an editorial perspective. And Spotify is making some of those. I'm sure their lawyers are making some of those choices for them as about what to remove. That's okay to go ahead and look at that and not say we can say whatever we want. Sometimes we also have to think about our audience and the responsibility we have to them to provide them the best, most current information that we have right now, even though we didn't have it a year ago.

The number one thing that you're looking at. Is your business model right? Does this make sense to my business model? Does this make sense to my own terms and conditions and my own policies? Just the legal issue is just one little factor of that because you still, you still have to do what you think is right. And like you said, this is a platform for your speech and you may be willing to take more of a risk because it's important to your free speech. And those are decisions your business people make all the time.

We also hear some big things. Elon Musk goes on a podcast and stocks tank. So you have fiscal responsibilities as well that might upset your shareholders.

That's a whole nother.

That's a whole nother cannabis.

That's another episode, I tell you.

Absolutely. Well, Maria, we so appreciate you coming on the show and really talking about these issues. Do you have any last bit of. You're just such an expert in digital law, anything that you think we should be aware of that might be coming up or things that podcasters and of course, podcasters who are also bloggers, from a content provider perspective, is there anything we should be aware of that's kind of coming up? You mentioned section 230. It's so vague what might happen there.

Sort of like you said about the other issue, Tom, it's probably a discussion for a whole nother podcast, but there's just fascinating issues about the ownership of content in the podcast. That's a great point.

Yeah. You know, we had an intellectual property attorney come on and talk about, you know, some of the legal issues. Or she, she came on the Binge factor, actually, and had talked about some of those issues of reserving your rights, actually, early on, if you're an independent podcaster, so you can sell it to a studio later. And I thought that was such an interesting perspective.

So, yes, I mean, you definitely want. Because the law is unclear about who owns the content when you're creating a podcast. I mean, obviously you own your own content when you're doing everything, but when you're doing everything that you do. And like, for instance, right now, and I'm. All I'm doing is speaking because the law is unclear about the ownership of that. The recommended practice is that you have agreements with your guests that clarify that, because whatever you contractually agree to.

It will be that way. So.

And we have agreements as the editors and designers of the graphics and all those things. We have a for hire agreement so that it's really clear for us, because there are other apps and other things out there. You mentioned some of these apps where you can record within the apps and they actually state in their terms and conditions they own your content and you can't remove it from the platform, from the app.

Some of them do, yeah, some of them do. Some of them do or have in the past, for sure. And yeah, we're very clear about that here. When we, for our clients that we produce their content for, we're very clear that they own all the content. We don't take any, make any claim or take any right of the ownership in that just because we're trying to support independent publishers and they're content creators and there's no really reason for us to own any part of that. So at least.

So even if they're not clear about it, we're trying to be clear about it for them.

That's such a good point.

We definitely have to have you come back and we'll talk about that, especially as some new things are kind of coming up in that. So when maybe something really hits the news and things are changing, we'll have you back on to talk to our group about that. Any other questions that you have?

No. I'm really pleased with the discussion we had today and I want to thank you for that. I like trying to bring some kind of, I guess, better understanding to podcasters out there as to what reality is and some things they can feel confident in and some things that they may want to be careful around. So I really appreciate you and thank you for coming on and sharing your perspective today.

Yeah. And as always, everyone who's listening to the show, we're going to have all kinds of ways in which you can reach out to Maria and find her and find her practice in Arizona. They've got quite the broad practice in digital law and you'll definitely want to catch up and learn more about her. So you'll be able to do that at the blog post for this episode. And the blog posts are now all@potatize.com that's where you'll be able to find them. So, Maria, thank you so much for coming on. Really appreciate your perspectives and have always appreciated your friendship over the years as well.

Me too. Thanks for having me, guys.

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