Navigating The Legal World Of Podcasting How Copyright Can Safeguard Your Podcast With The Podcast Lawyer, Gordon P. Firemark, Esq. Of The Entertainment Law Update Podcast

Wish you were one of those influencers with raving fans who binge on your every word, consume all your content, buy everything you have to sell, and demand even more. Then stay tuned while Authority Magazine columnist and buzzfeed contributor Tracy Hazzard shares strategies, tips and tactics from top videocasters, podcasters, authors and social influencers on creating that bingeable factor. Now let's join Tracy as she explores how to rise above all the digital noise with the Binge Factor.

Hey everyone. Welcome to the Binge Factor. I'm Tracy Hazard and I have an OG podcaster today. A podcaster who's been in and around the industry for quite some time. He is known as the Podcast Lawyer. He has been instrumental in helping us podcasters understand how to stay creative, stay legal, and maybe get some IP in the process, some intellectual property going. So Gordon Firemark helps creatives, artists, entrepreneurs, and others achieve the dream of getting their messages out and making a meaningful impact. He's practiced media, entertainment and business law since 1992 and is often referred to as the Podcast Lawyer. As a podcaster himself, he's been producing and hosting the Entertainment Law Update podcast since 2009 and has also launched More Better, Faster Podcast as long as some others that he's going to talk to us about today. He's the author of the Podcast Blog and New Media Producers Legal Survival Guide and the creator of several online courses for creators. He is phenomenal. If you haven't heard of Gordon Firemark and you've been in the industry for a while, I'd be shocked because he's spoken on so many fantastic stages. That's actually how we met as we were doing a meetup event here in California. He and I finally got to meet in person and his voice is just so wonderfully radio podcast voice. It's so wonderfully resonant and I know you're going to enjoy getting to know him and he's exactly like that in person. So it's going to be a fun episode. We're going to talk about podcast practices, things about copyright. We're going to talk a little bit about AI. So we've got a whole bunch of little things in here mixed in. This is going to be quite a varied episode with lots of topics that will interest you. So join us as we talk more to Gordon Firemark, the Podcast Lawyer.

Gordon, I'm so glad to talk with you. We got to meet up in person and I've heard of you in the industry. I've read your book and I have gotten to hear your show many times, and we finally got to meet at a meetup this past fall. And I'm so glad. And what I really realized is your voice in person is just as wonderful as it is over the mic.

Well, thank you, Tracy. I'm glad to be here. And yeah, it's great to have connected with you a couple months ago now and establish this relationship. It's wonderful. So, thanks.

Yeah. So I have to say that I think that talking about podcast law might be really boring to some people, but it fascinates me, and I think it's highly necessary for us to get into talking about this, because I think that most podcasters, bloggers, even video creators. Right. Like entertainment in all its forms or media in all its forms, underestimate the value of what they're creating from intellectual property standpoint.

I agree. Creative people of all sorts. I mean, I started out working in live theater. Creative people come at things with creativity being the main goal. Let's be creative, let's have some fun, let's do this thing. Let's make stuff. And they don't really think about creating a lasting value around it or how they're going to monetize it, whether they're going to monetize it. And it's only when they start to think about that, because now I've got this fun hobby. How do I make it worthwhile?

How do I pay for it?

Exactly. That's when they start having to think about it. And often by then, it's a little late in the game. And other threats come from various angles if you don't have stuff in the way. So that's what I'm here for, is to educate and inform and help creative people in all the disciplines to get set up and protect themselves a bit.

Well. And I think that something that most people don't realize is that they think that because we're using an RSS feed, which is a publicly distributed media type, we're doing it in this feed type. Doesn't mean you forego your rights.

Absolutely. In fact, those rights become even more important when the stuff is out there. You can't chain a podcast to a fence and say, that's mine. Don't take it.

No one's going to listen to it if you just had it there. Right. So you do have to distribute it.

Yeah, but one of the risks is that people come along and grab chunks of it, or the whole thing, sometimes use it improperly, or nowadays there's all kinds of other weird technology things that can happen. And the other Side of this is when podcasters are creating that act of being creative, you want to bring in stuff that other people made, music, poetry, spoken word clips, whatever, video, whatever. And doing that in a safe and smart way matters so that you can actually continue making your stuff. Because if you don't do it right, they'll put a stop to it eventually.

Well, yeah, so it goes both ways. It goes to what you include in content. Are you in discussion about a book? Do you read a quote from that book? Did you play a clip from something? Any of those things matter, but what someone else does with it with your show matters, too. So we want them to promote our show, but we also don't want them to trip over and pass it off as theirs. And I think that's kind of the key there is when you were really attributing something and linking back to the original source, we're honoring that connection, but too often we forget to do it.

And you do have to be careful when you link back to that original source or reference it or whatever. I mean, we've all seen those YouTube videos where the description will say something like, no copyright infringement intended or whatever. And oftentimes that's actually more of a smoking gun than exculpatory. It's not going to get you out of trouble if you're infringing somebody's copyright, saying, I didn't mean to. Doesn't matter. And what I'm here to do is make sure people understand the rules and understand where the boundaries and the exceptions exist and hopefully navigate them smart, sane, productive way.

Well, you're my guest on this show, so let's do it from that perspective so everybody could get an understanding of. Is like, if you're a guest on a podcast, what do you think is fair use in terms of promoting that episode?

You mean by the guest.

Yes, clipping, making mentions of it. What do you think is a fair use there?

I think linking to it is fair referencing, maybe a small snippet or something. The way I do it is I rely on the host to give me the collateral material to use to promote it. That way I know that what you've given me, you're okay with me sharing it on my social media and stuff.

Like that, which I will do, by the way.

I would hope so. I am dead set against podcast hosts giving the raw file or even the finished file to the guest because you lose control. You don't have any way of saying, yeah, that's still what I created. Now, there are technological ways that a guest who wants to can download the file and do something with it if they want. But why make it easy? And why give them permission, implicit or otherwise?

I think that's absolutely right. And you promote and you have a link which I will put in the show notes for this episode, but you have a link to a guest release, your language that you utilize there. And podcast release is what you call it, but that in it, it outlines exactly what. What they are allowed and not allowed to do. And I think that that's really important to state.

Yeah, it's really one of these things that creators don't think about is, hey, two or more people getting together to make something, who owns it? They all do. It's a joint creation. Well, if you're the podcaster, you're the one with the investment in the technology and the software, all the tools that are, not to mention your time and energy, you want to own it, you want to control. You want to have A, have the right to make the recording in the first place. That's part of what the release includes. B, you want the consent to use it, the ways you intend to. And I generally try to be as expansive as possible about that because you never know. You might decide to use transcripts and make a book sometime or whatever, or an online course, and you want the guest to know, hey, I don't intend that. This is jointly owned. This is mine. I'm the copyright owner. And then that means you can only use it in the ways I say you can use it.

Now, I think, though, some podcasters trip over that because they have paid guests, and then there really becomes, what's that contract between us and who really does own that? And what can I have a say in that when I'm already paying for it? And I think that's one of the reasons I'm not a proponent of paid guest spots, because I think it muddies that tremendously.

We're on the same page about that. I also think it's not a great thing, although I do see that there is a business, there's a place for it, but I think that it's more about don't try to pull the wool over your audience's eyes if that's the case.

Well, yeah, because that's also very often they fail to put anything in any notes that say, this was a paid spot.

Right. And ultimately, if someone's paying you for the endorsement of who they are, what they're about, their message, their product, whatever, that's a paid ad. Essentially, you've got a program like advertisement. And if your audience comes to listen to you because they trust what you say as a host and that you believe in the guests you have on, they have a right to know, hey, I got paid for having so and so. And that's not something that the FTC is really talking about just yet, but I think it's only a matter of time.

I think it is a pretty gray area if you're in that space. Now, I have heard of some people accepting fees for rush fees to move something up in a promotion, and I'm kind of okay with that because it is costly to edit a show, and if you need me to move mine up in my production schedule, I could see that happening. But that's clearly what it's for after the recording. Like, I would prefer to record first and then accept a fee if I were going to do it.

But even that you could do a simple disclosure that just says, hey, listeners originally had something else planned for this week, but so and so has something really exciting they want to tell you about. So we recorded them a month ago and we've decided to bump them up in the schedule and we've received some promotional consideration. So here you go. Enjoy.

And I think your audience will appreciate the honesty.

Grateful. Yeah, that kind of transparency is super important.

Yeah, I agree with you on that one. Well, I think there's a little bit of misunderstanding about RSS feeds in general. And so let's just talk about that. I mean, the copyright is actually listed that. It's one of the line items that should be in your RSS feed. And most people, I think, don't do it properly. So that's one of the things I would love to have you confirm for them, is that if the copyright's owned by you personally or your company, does that make a difference? Should you have both in your copyright line?

Well, I've never really thought about that question before. Copyright is actually fairly easy to own. You make something as long as it's original and you fix it in some tangible form so you record the thing, you own the copyright. Now, who is you in the equation when you are part of a company? When you have a company, I generally say the company is the owner of the.

If they're paying for the podcast, then they should be the owner technically.

Well, if you're talking about an employee of a business and podcasting is a part of that business's expectations of you as the employee, then absolutely the company owns it. That's what we call a work made for hire. It's One of the two ways that something can be work for hire, an employee created it, the employer owns it. The other way is an independent contractor created it. But you have a written contract, it has to be in writing, and it has to specifically express that the results of the work will be a work for hire for the employing party, hiring party. And that's where we get into tricky stuff with folks like editors.

Mostly I find it on a producer level. Not a lot of editors are good about that, but I find producers more often have a problem.

But really, anybody who touches your show, who brings in any kind of creative input could argue with degrees of success. Hey, I co own that episode. I'm a co owner of the copyright in that. So I think that getting that in writing is super important. You're going to hear that from me over and over again. Get it in writing.

Get it in writing. I love it. We're going to rehash that all day. I love that. It's actually really important. And I agree with you on that. And it's one of our policies, and in our company is that it's explicit that we do not own the work that our clients do. And that's because we don't want any gray area in that.

Yeah, but in other circumstances, a network or platform might want to own.

Right, because they're paying for it, they're funding it, they've grown it.

Exactly. So I talk about having a podcast prenup. It's about laying out these expectations early on in the relationship.

I love the prenup idea. It was one of my favorite episodes that I listened to because we've had a lot of co hosts go bad. And I think that it really. Laying out an understanding of it is important from the beginning.

I think it's an apt metaphor because you're getting into this relationship with a co host or co producer, whatever. And things don't always work. Relationships get weird, especially when money becomes a factor. And so you ask the question, who gets the house? Who gets the kids? Well, the house is the episode content and the kids is the RSS feed. The audience.

That's right, yeah, the audience. So now, here's another thing that I find often goes wrong with RSS feeds, is that hosts don't understand that if their email address isn't on that, if they're not in possession of the RSS feed and where it goes, whatever email address is associated with it, it's actually who has the rights to move it, to do things with it. And some of them have lost that in their production model of hiring other people and they don't even understand that they're not in possession of their own feed.

Yeah, I think it's really important that when you're starting a new show, if you're starting a new hosting account or a new feed. Yeah. You need to be very explicit with the hosting company of whose this is. It's so often people will start out a show together and one person says, I'll take care of that side and you take care of the email. And so now when the breakup happens, you've got one party holding the email addresses for ransom and the others holding the RSS feed.

Yes. I guess you've been through this before.

I have been through it several times. Not as a party, but as a lawyer representing people in these situations. And I'll tell you, the only people who come out ahead if you haven't thought it through early is the lawyers.

Well, thank you for saying that. But yes, that's why we do want people to start thinking this through ahead.

Yeah.

And I think this is also something, is that people we've received, like we've had some clients who've emailed somebody through their RSS feed because there's an email address in there, it's right publicly available and it say, hey, I'd like to be a guest on your show. And they get the nastiest message back from the podcast host that says, how'd you get my email? And they're like, you do need to understand that it's publicly available and people are going to find it.

That's actually something that's in the midst of changing right now. The RSS feeds are no longer going to show the email address of the owner of the feedback out of concerns for privacy and spamming and so on. Because there were some less scrupulous companies that were scraping RSS feeds to gather up these lists. There's what, 4 million total podcasts out there. You get that list together pretty quickly, it could be abused.

Well, and there are whole companies who shall remain nameless here, but they're all whole companies who actually then resell the list to assistants, to press agents, to other things. And I do think the selling of that, I think if you're doing a one on one and I'm reaching out to an individual who has that, I think that's fair. I'm saying, hey, I think I'm a right fit for your show and let's have a conversation about it. That's I looked you up, I did it. It was there. If it's no longer there. Then I got to go the hard route, which is go find your website and find you, and that's okay, too.

Which really shouldn't be that hard.

Right.

And in fact, I would say if you are interested in having guests on your show, you want to be reachable about that kind of thing, then, yeah. The price you pay is you get those pitches from the people who are totally not qualified.

That's right. That's why I do recommend to my clients to set up an individual, a special email address that is for that. So you can do a lot of spam filtering. So I think this is just understanding that this is the home, the holder of your intellectual property here, but it's also the holder of access to you, the holder of your subscribers. In a sense, it's really important that it's done right.

And so often people start a show, like we said, just. Somebody just said, I'll just make that rss. I'll sign up for the hosting or. Or whatever. And then later they come back and they start a company or form an LLC or something like that to formalize that relationship. They get that prenup stuff happening, and nobody thinks to go and update the records at the hosting service. And a. There's financial things. You're supposed to use a company credit card to pay the bill, but at some point, the company should be identified as the owner of the account and therefore the RSS feed. And that will streamline things. If you ever need to move the RSS feed or if you end up having one of these pod Vorses that. I call it the Breakup or.

This happened to a client of mine. His company got bought out and he was restricted from continuing his podcast. But he didn't sell it to them. He technically didn't sell it to them. And I thought you missed an opportunity to make some more money, like it has value. And we talked about that after, and he was like, I should have called.

You, or to retain the right to keep doing the show.

Yeah.

Frankly, that's where having someone, a good advisor, someone who can look at the deal and identify those loopholes, for lack of a better word, and sort of say, ask the right questions. What about this? What about the show? Is it going with Deal or is it not?

Well, you've got a few shows that you've done over the years. You've got Entertainment Law Update, which you've been doing for quite some time. You've got a really huge amount, and that one's specifically focused for lawyers and law Students and kind of giving them this view on media. And then you've got Entertainment Asked and answered, the Law Podcasting podcast, which I thought was kind of a mouthful, but I kind of. I liked it because it was a mouthful. And now you've got Legit Podcast Pro and another one coming up with our friend Elsie Escobar from she podcast Fuzzy Logic.

That's right. So I will start. I'm going to just talk a little bit. Entertainment Law Update is the show that I began with in 2009. So we're up about 14 years doing that show. It's a monthly update of the legal news in the entertainment and media industries. And actually we're recording our 154th episode tomorrow, so.

Wow. Congratulations.

Thank you. By the time this comes out, it'll probably be 155. But yeah, we just kept going almost every month since April of 2009. And here we are. My co host and I just have a good time and it's a little high level discussion. So it's not for the casual listener, but if you're interested in the field of entertainment or copyrights and trademarks and those kinds of things, there's something there for you. The other shows you mentioned, the law podcasting podcast, was me talking to other lawyers who have podcasts. Because at the time I had a course on how to podcast that it was targeted at lawyers.

That makes sense now.

So the course was called Power Podcasting for Lawyers and I was teaching other lawyers how to do it. So this was my proof of concept, social proof. Entertainment line. Industry insights just never kind of took off.

And we always have one of those. All of us do.

We pod faded. Yeah, exactly. But the new one, the most recent. But lately I've been doing Legit Podcast Pro, which is really talking to podcasters and YouTube creators and folks like that about these legal issues that they need to be thinking about. It's mostly solo right now. I do plan to have some guests coming in in the future because I want to be more than just that legal guy talking about the law stuff. There's a lot more to podcasting and.

You'Re doing that one video first, so you have more of that video model.

Yeah, I go live stream on Facebook and LinkedIn and Twitter and YouTube all simultaneously every Thursday afternoon to do that. And then we strip the audio feed and strip the audio out and put that into a feed for those who want to listen on the go. I'm not sure that's necessary anymore with YouTube being what it is, but we'll Keep it up.

I think some of us like the playlist model, like the push. So I do think there's still a model for serious binge listeners. And that's always a good thing because it's all in one place, easier to navigate. I think YouTube gets distracting. That's my personal view of it, because all the other videos follow up and it doesn't always follow in your channel only, and I think that's distracting.

And when you're doing video, you as the maker, get distracted by the bells and whistles and having to put things up on screen and so on. So I try not to do too much of that. I've got a pretty good workflow down. I came out of the live television production world, so I'm pretty good at having a programmed rundown and just making it happen. And that brings me to the next one, which is what you mentioned. Fuzzy Logic is a show that I was approached by the folks over at Pneumo Spect Creator lab, Brie Campano and Trevor Tomien asked me to do this show where we would be addressing more than just the legal, but the social ethical, applying lots of different lenses to issues that are facing creators and society. And when we started out to do this, I said, okay, great, but I'm just another old white guy. We need someone else to be on this panel with me and it needs to be somebody who is not an old white guy. And so I think we hit a home run. We went looking and we asked Elsie Escobar and she was pleased to join us. And she's terrific. She brings a very different perspective to things and I think we really work well together.

Yeah, she has such a good human centered view on things and I think that makes it a better show, number one. But number two, I just think that has that sort of aspect of really thinking through as a creator, like, is this what I really want? Is this right for me? Is this the way to go?

Yeah. So that show happens live Friday mornings, 11am Eastern, 8am Pacific. And we just did our. Well, that we're in week three, so week two, we covered. Yeah, we talked about deep fake technology last episode and how that can affect things. And it reaches much further than we just think of a fake of the President saying something he didn't say or those kinds of things. And so it's really interesting to have those conversations. And we end up asking more questions and coming up with answers. And our first episode was we talked about the AI technology that everybody's talking about these days. Right.

We were Talking about it a little bit before we were saying that. I'm sure this is going to come up today because it seems to come up at every conversation. But I do think that there's a lot of things in AI that are going on right now that come to question. There's a lot of things coming on. There's lawsuits already in place on with Getty Images and on image creation that and on training data sets that they didn't maybe have authorization to use.

Right.

I have my opinion on it, but I'm not sure. I'm not a lawyer, so we'll see what legal precedents get set over there. But there's that and then there's also this idea of like my voice print being mine.

Yeah. And that's where the Deepfake conversation ended up sort of going is I had actually been interviewed on another show last week about it was voiceover artists, voice actors, and they were saying, well wait a minute now if anybody can go grab my voice print and make an ad for the competitor of one of the companies that has paid me to do a voice for their ad, now I'm in hot water with. The example was if I do voices for Toyota and now someone puts together a Honda ad and uses a sound alike of my voice. Honda's not going to hire me anymore. So it's got a direct economic impact. Not to mention that they didn't get paid to do the voicing of the thing in the first place. That's just a barely scratches the surface of where these legal issues really are.

Now it is my understanding that it's harder to tell deep fakes in video than it is actually in audio. And I just heard that and I'm trying to find more detail on why that is, but that I have heard that and I thought that was a really interesting. And I think probably because voice patterning, the way that I speak, the way that you speak, has so much variation in it that you could see inauthentic patterning quickly.

I think that's true. I think it has something to do with video. There's more to pay attention to and the eyes and the ears are both doing their job at the same time. When it's just audio, you're tuned in more deeply to one of your senses. And so it is easier maybe to. We all know we can hear that cut in an audio file sometimes, especially if it's not.

Or over filtering.

Or over filtering.

Yeah, that's my least favorite one. I really take that one to issue.

Right. But when there's video. Also, we overlook it because we're distracted.

By something else or we are assuming our Internet's bad. Like, we just have that assumption. Right.

Yeah. And the saying in video is, audiences will forgive bad lighting or a slightly fuzzy image or something like that if the audio is good. But the converse is not true.

Yeah. And that's where I think it's actually going in that kind of way. So I'm really hoping we're not going to end up with a bunch of podcast deepfakes. So I really hope that premonition doesn't come through. You know, prediction.

There was that one Joe Rogan interviewing Steve Jobs.

Yeah.

After Steve was already dead. So.

But we would hope that would have been, like, pretty obvious.

That was the proof of concept, though, so.

Yeah, exactly. Well, interesting. You've also been talking about thinking about podcast code of ethics with Elsie, and I think that it might be time.

Yeah. I mean, journalists have operated under various. There's a bunch of journalists code of ethics, depending on which organization and those kinds of things. And I've been saying for a long time that I think podcasters need to think of ourselves as journalists. Even if you're just doing storytelling, there's an ethical code that goes there, too. And it goes beyond the copyrights and trademarks and plagiarism, but also just how you go about presenting information and where the information is coming from. That transparency we were talking about earlier. And yeah, I think it is high time that we, as a collective of podcasters, really started thinking about, okay, how are we going to draw these lines?

Well, I actually have on the Binge Factors website, I actually have my own code of ethics there. And I didn't do it from any kind of legal standpoint. I just wanted to make a statement as to where I was on that, because I was also, at the time when I first started it, a writer for Inc Magazine. And so very often my podcast would end up in an article eventually. So I wanted to make clarity between the combination of the two. And so I put that on my site. And I think that it's not often that I find that in other places.

No, I don't think it is very common. And I think. I think it's less about what the code of ethics actually says and more about just the act of thinking about it and applying the overlay. Okay. What is ethical to do in this circumstance? And it'll be a different answer for different people. But if your audience kind of gets where you're coming from about these things, they get to choose I'm so glad.

You said it that way because I was talking to you before our interview part here, before we turn the recording on, that we're working on an AI code of ethics within our company. And it really is. It's not about the actual letter of it, it is about the intention of it and making sure that we're all clear on our whole team what our intention of the use of AI is and what we think trips over things that unintended consequences in our case of harming creators value, because that's one of our primary ethical bases for everything that we've made decisions for in our company already. So we want to make sure we continue that through. And we've got new team members, new coders, and we want to say, hey, this is what Tom and I believe and this is why we think we need to screen decisions that might violate that.

Yeah, it's interesting. We've been talking about ethics more and more lately. It's been in the consciousness more. I think, frankly, the last couple of presidential elections have probably had something to do with that and just how things are going in American politics and worldwide too. And so it's really interesting. I think it's time we creators started at least thinking about the stuff.

I completely agree. Now, one more thing before we head into a couple final questions here. I want to mention is that you are coming out with a legal course for podcasters. And what's going to be in that course? Tell us a little bit about it.

Yeah. Thank you. The program is called Easy Legal for Podcasters and it is a four or five modules of the legal stuff. I don't want to go through all what those modules are, but I want to help the folks who need a little help but don't necessarily have the resources to hire a lawyer to come on board and do it all for you.

Well, especially if you don't know if your podcast is going to take off yet. So you kind of need that interim and then maybe you build up to the pro level.

Well, yeah, exactly. But honestly, I'd love it when people have got some of T's crossed and I's dotted before they come to me so we can focus on the bigger, higher level issues. And I'm not worried about setting up the minimum.

So in that Easy Legal course, we're really thinking about setting a good basis for your intellectual property, perhaps in the future for values for who owns what, what are some other outcomes that might happen?

So we look at the setting up a foundational business structure for your show. Now, that's not something that everybody needs, but many should be considering that working with your team. Some of the things we talked about earlier, when you start to bring people onto the team, they are all contributing creative input to your show. You got to make sure those contracts are in writing, those deals are done. The intellectual property stuff. Absolutely. Owning who owns what.

So I do want to point out. So Gordon does what I think to be the way to do it. Okay. He has trademarked the Podcast Lawyer, and he's got a TM on his. He not only does that so often, I see a lot of you put your company name or your trademark name into your author field of your RSS feed and author field of what's distributed out to the podcast apps and forget to put your name, too. Gordon does both. He's got both in there. And I'm so glad you do well.

Yeah. I call myself Gordon Firemark, the Podcast Lawyer, and that is my brand.

And that way, if somebody were to say, I can't remember his name, but I know the Podcast lawyer, and they type it in, he's going to show up. And that's why I like that you do both.

Yeah, that's branding. That's not legal stuff per se, but there you go. Anyway, the fourth component of the Easy Legal program is the monetization. Making sure you've got the right deals for the particular model you're using for monetizing your show. It's not just about advertising sales. And certainly we have a template agreement, and that's what the program is. It's me giving instruction and walking you through, step by step, how to do some of these things, and also providing the templates and forms and checklists and worksheets to make it almost as easy.

Well, we're going to have all the links for that in the show notes for this episode, and I've moved up this episode. Gordon didn't pay me for that, so. But that's okay. I offered to move it up because I think it's really valuable to all of you listening out there. So I've moved it up to make sure that this episode airs before his course goes live so that we can make sure that happens.

Right. So what's going live on the 27th of March is my workshop. It's a free online webinar workshop called Business and Legal Fundamentals for Podcast Growth and Profit. And so you'll get a lot of the basics. I guess you could say you get a lot of a what in this presentation that I'll be doing on the 27th and then from there I'll tell you how you can get in on special promotion for easy legal for podcasters.

Well, we'll make sure, because this is an extremely important. And a lot of you I know have been asking questions about this. It's one of our most. We don't touch on it very often, but when we do we get copyright questions, creative questions on contracts for ad programs and other things like the legal side of it is a big question that comes up a lot when we open up our Q&As. So I'm happy to support this because I think Gordon's an expert. He is truly the podcast lawyer and we want to make sure that all can get on it early on. So we'll make that available. So the future for you, you've got a lot of podcasts going on. You've been doing this for a while. Is there anything that you feel like you've been getting such a great return on investment from this? So what is that and what are you going to do more of in the future?

I think I am going to be doing more of the not video first, but video also podcasting. I just enjoy it. To be honest with you. I kind of think I have a face made for radio.

Oh, no. But I think you're very animated on the videos.

Yeah, and I just enjoy it. And I enjoy the interactive because when I do that show before and after I do the scheduled program, I do some Q and A with the audience and I try to just interact a little bit. That doesn't make it into the RSS feed, but it does make it into the YouTube channel. So I think I'll be devoting a little more attention to the YouTube channel itself. I do see a return on investment there. It's the thing that positions me as an expert in my field that people find in search because YouTube is such a powerful search engine and tends to be shorter format than podcasts, which people have to commit to listening so well.

Before I go, I want to make sure that everybody knows what I believe the binge factor is for your show and for you in general, because it goes across all of your shows. It's actually the same for me. And it is that you have this wonderful soft spoken model. Of course you have the nice deep voice. But I mean in the way that you talk about the law, the way that you do, the way that you talk about everything is coming straight from the heart. Caring about the creators, caring about your audience, that is whether it's the law, students and the lawyers who are listening, or it's the creators themselves. You have this deep care for that, and it comes across in this great, caring way. And not a like, this is gospel, and this is what I say you should do. And which seems to be a little bit more of the law practice podcast model that I hear a lot. Not your show at all.

A lot of lawyers are all about do it this way, do it my way, that kind of thing.

Or scaring you like, well, you don't do it my way, you're done. And you're like, I'm going to feel really bad for you.

That actually is how they teach lawyers to market, is tell them all the things that can go wrong. But don't worry, I can help you. I'll make it go away. And that's not how I want to market myself. And my brand is about educating and sharing and empowering creators to do their thing. Because, honestly, I really believe that freedom of speech is the most important right we have. I mean, there's lots of others, of course, but the right to speak out and get the conversations going and have the culture, the society talking about important issues is so important. And any legal or governmental interference with that is dangerous. It's really dangerous. And so, yeah, I'm just here to help folks make sure they can get their message out and have the impact they desire.

Well, Gordon, thank you for being the podcast lawyer and thank you for bringing your message to the world and helping all of us and in this industry grow.

Well, thanks, Tracy. I really appreciate the opportunity to speak to your audience and you.

So Gordon and I could talk for some time. I know you guys know that I'm kind of a legal geek. I love intellectual property. I love all kinds of stuff like copyrights and trademarks, and so does Tom, my partner and husband in potties. And so. So this is something that we care about. We really care about making sure that you preserve the best value you can get from what you're creating here. And a creator is inherently building value at all times. Gordon believes in that, too, and that comes across in all his shows, whether you're listening to legit podcast Pro Entertainment Law, asked and answered. The law podcast, like Entertainment Law Update, like, he's got them all. And he also has that legal course which is going to be fantastic and running in the next week. So I am going to have a link for that because he's got this podcast law course that might be of great interest to you, and I want to make sure you catch it in a timely manner where you can get the event as it launches. So that's going to launch in the next week. So if you're listening to this show, right, as I put it out there, you've got five days left to subscribe to it. Go to the blog post for this episode@thebingefactor.com and we'll link you directly up to the course. It's gonna be really great for you and you're going to enjoy it as well. So don't always follow the old way podcasters are doing. You need to keep up and updated. And that's what I really like about the way that Gordon's working. Because he's starting new shows, he has to stay up on what's different, what's new now, which means that his advice is much more current. We really have to be careful as podcasters not to take OG advice just because they're a guru, just because they've been around for a long time. Because if they haven't been keeping up on it and staying abreast of what's new, then they're not going to be the best advisor for you. If you are launching or producing or marketing your show today. Gordon's the opposite of that. So you're going to want to check out his show. You're going to want to check out some of the new things that he's got going. And don't forget to check out that course. Gordon Firemark, everyone. And I'll be back next week with another podcaster, not another lawyer. Not going to happen this time. I've got somebody completely different for you. But as always, if there's a topic or area of interest that you want to hear, you got to reach out and let me know. Find me on social media. Go to thepingefactor.com and let me know what you're interested in finding out more about. Thanks everyone for listening. I'm Tracy Hazzard and I'll be back next week on the Binge Factor.

You've been listening to the Binge Factor Podcast. For more information on podcasting and video casting success tips and tactics, please go to thebingefactor.com and be sure to listen to our other show for podcasters called Feed you'd brand. If you'd like to be interviewed on this show as well as featured in Tracy's column, please go to thebingefactor.com guest and apply.