From The Experts

Now that we have the Internet at our fingertips we have the opportunity to make ourselves aware and up to date on anything that we may be eager to learn and understand. As the World Wide Web continues to grow we now have the ability to listen to the radio, lectures and podcast on just about anything that sparks our interest.

I will be reviewing important topics from three different Entertainment Law podcast and some of their relevant business legal liabilities.  The first podcast is Episode 17: Can Kanye write songs 140 characters at a time? One of the topics from this podcast that really interest myself was the, Copyright Royalty Board set the webcasting rates for 2011-2015.  Each time that a webcast is played the copyright owner will receive a royalty rate of $0.0019 for each time it is played. This rate will increase by the year 2015 to $0.0025.  Not being fully aware of what type of royalties that were given to webcast, it was more of a surprise.  Another issue within this podcast relates with the episode topic. The topic involves Josh Groban performing a skit on Jimmy Kimmel Live in which he sings Kanye West’s tweets. The question is now raised are tweets able to be copy written? Kanye did not seem to take offense to the skit nor take it to a level of legal action. This is an issue that can and I do believe should be debated. Some people that do tweet come up with some original material. On the other hand most of us look at social networks such as Twitter tweets and Facebook statues, a way to express how we feel about certain issues. To listen and read what Gordon Firemark has to say on this check out .

The next podcast that I will go over is Episode 26- Attack of the Little Trees! Within this podcast it’s a lawsuit case that UMG has filed against Grooveshark. Grooveshark is a site that allows users to upload music that they own. Grooveshark is being accused of streaming unauthorized copyrighted music to its users.  It is said that the employees of Grooveshark have uploaded over 113,000 songs to the website.  The issue here is that the website’s users did not upload the material but the employees were given a certain number of uploads to do each week. To see a list of the song that was uploaded visit.

 My last podcast that I will review is entitled Entertainment Law Update, Episode 16. This podcast is by attorneys for attorneys to give insight and updates on different cases. This podcast is very useful for attorneys within entertainment law. It would keep them up to date on cases that have/are taking place. Cases are being filed daily it may be hard for some attorneys to keep up with them all. This podcast touches all just about every aspect of entertainment. To hear all the cases they are reviewed and insight given go to.