Podcast Plagiarism: Are you Breaking the Law?
November 5th, 2006 by 
adminMaking a podcast has become so easy that even non-professionals can put together a simple program on just about any topic under the sun. There are church volunteers recording last Sunday’s sermon, or hobbyists making how-tos on everything from crafting to collecting comic books. But unfortunately, this rush to make podcasts has led to people “borrowing” music and sound effects from CD’s, movies and websites. And this means copyright violation, intellectual theft—and huge fines if you’re caught.This becomes even more problematic once you use your podcast to earn money. You are gaining profit at someone’s expense, and if you get caught, your podcast and the website it’s operating on can be closed down.Note that you don’t need to see a copyright notice on a website for its contents to be declared “protected” by the law. In the United States, anything that’s created and unique immediately gives the creator intellectual copyright protection. The good news is that you can sue the pants off anyone who uses your podcast and claims it as his or her own. The bad news is that the production company that made the sound effects you “found” for your introduction can do the same to you.
Note that you don’t need to see a copyright notice on a website for its contents to be declared “protected” by the law. In the United States, anything that’s created and unique immediately gives the creator intellectual copyright protection. The good news is that you can sue the pants off anyone who uses your podcast and claims it as his or her own. The bad news is that the production company that made the sound effects you “found” for your introduction can do the same to you.Of course US law has something called “fair use”, which means that you can use some stuff in some ways without having to get expressed permission of the copyright holder. Unfortunately this is no hard and fast, clear and simple rule. Intellectual copyright laws existed long before the Internet and podcasts were invented. At that time, the “regular joes” didn’t have the technology to create their own programs. Professional radio stations, for example, will need to contact the artist to use a song for an introduction—and it was really easy for them, because they were radio stations after all. How does a housewife from Cincinnati call Celine Dion to ask if she can use part of her album for a podcast?
Instead, fair use just has a few guidelines, questions to ask yourself before you use any material. For example, how much of the material have you used? Are you profiting from this material? And how much did you change or edit the work?
Fortunately, fair use includes commenting on a work, or even parodying it. And many artists will be happy as long as you give them proper credit—acknowledging something is theirs. For example, if you use a song for an intro, include in your closing remarks, “This podcast used the following materials, the song blah blah blah by artist blah blah blah, distributed by so and so record company.
Another option is to buy image production effects and music. Many companies produce a sampler, taken from massive music libraries. You won’t need all that much, so you have the option of selection which sampler you foresee yourself building your podcast around. Some of these companies have a monthly subscription rates, others let you “buy” the rights, giving you the rights to use them forever. Be sure to read the Terms of Agreement.