Learning from the Pros

When thinking about starting your own business, it’s always important to do research on the industry and try to learn as much as possible from other’s mistakes. Team 20 Productions is a company that will concentrate on providing dance choreography within the entertainment industry. It will also include dance workshops and consultations with developing artists. We will take a look at three separate podcasts and how the information in them will help with the creation of Team 20 Productions.

            The first podcast one we will discuss is Margaret Gould Stewart: How YouTube thinks about copyright. Margaret Gold is the head of user content for YouTube. She describes the relationship between copyright holders and YouTube. This podcast was very interesting to me because I have already experienced some copyright issues with YouTube as a dance instructor. A few months ago, I posted a video from one of my dance classes to my YouTube account that included a snippet from the song “Flawless” by Beyonce’. This is extremely common practice for choreographers and dance instructors to post videos of their class choreography or even dance concept videos. A few weeks ago, I noticed that YouTube removed the sound from my video due to a copyright issue at the request of the copyright owner of the song.  Margaret’s speech gave me a better understanding of why this took place. YouTube prides itself in giving copyright owners a “choice” on how to proceed when their content is present in an uploaded video. The example she spoke about was regarding Chris Brown’s song “Forever.” A couple used this song in a wedding video they uploaded to YouTube and it went viral. The copyright owner, Sony Music, allowed this to stay and it actually had a direct impact on the song re-emerging on the charts. In regards to my video, the copyright owner chose to have the audio removed. This is the copyright owner’s choice and YouTube has created that within their policy. This podcast taught me that copyright is very important to understand and my company should be very diligent in copyrighting material that my company creates. It also taught me to make sure to get the correct clearances when necessary as well.

            The second podcast I viewed was Drew Curtis: How I beat a Patent Troll. This podcast was awesome! Copyrights and patents are concepts that are important to my business because we will be creating a lot of original content that may need certain protections. Drew Curtis is the founder of fark.com. Fark.com, along with several others, were a part of a lawsuit from a company that had a patent "...for the creation and distribution of news releases via email." This company that “owned” the patent is whom Curtis calls the “Patent Troll.” Curtis’ company as well as all of the other companies included in the lawsuit did not infringe on the patent, however, all of the other companies decided to settle because it’s cheaper to settle than attempt to fight the suit. Curtis and his lawyers decided to ask the company to provide screen shots of where his company infringed. The company’s lawyers didn’t do so and instead asked for a settlement offer. Curtis’ company said they would not pay anything in a settlement. The company agreed and in the settlement, Curtis also struck the non-disclosure agreement. This allows him to speak freely about the case. I learned quite a few things from this podcast, the first thing is the knowledge of “companies” that solely exist to purchase patents on future technology, ideas, etc. and go around filing claims on companies to get as many of these companies to pay out settlements. Curtis gave amazing tips on how to fight these “patent trolls:

1.Don’t fight the patent, fight the infringement.

2.Make it clear that you have no money, or that you’d rather spend money on a lawyer to fight the patent troll.

3.Make sure to let the patent troll know that you will make this process as annoying as possible.  This is a tactic the trolls normally use but it works both ways as well.

As a future business owner, I hope to never have to come across one of these, but it’s great to have the tools just in case!

            The last podcast to discuss is Lawrence Lessig:Laws that choke creativity. The title of this talk caught my attention the most. I like how he talked about how it’s important to embrace how young people remix or re-envision content. I think this is huge and takes us back to the YouTube issue discussed above. Lessig talks about how every use of culture will produce a copy.  He argues that the laws stifle creativity especially as we build new technology. He says that there are extremes with this debate and there needs to be a balance. I agree with him that copyright owners should make content available for “amateur use” to promote creativity. This will help my business so that I don’t have to get a license every time I want to post a video on YouTube of a dance class or workshop. This balance can also help in the reverse, like the Chris Brown/wedding video we spoke about above.

         In conclusion, these podcasts were great tools and providing amazing information that will help with the creation and implementation of Team 20 Productions.