Using music on your website, employees on Facebook or twitter, doing podcasts?  Everyone needs a guide to the legal issues that you may face as broadcasters move their content to new platforms.  At the Convention of the Oklahoma Association of Broadcasters, held in Oklahoma City on March 18-19, David Oxenford conducted a seminar on Legal Issues for Broadcasters Operating in a Digital World – dealing with legal issues that broadcasters need to take into account when moving their content and presence beyond their over-the-air signals.  The PowerPoint presentation used in that seminar is available here.  Other issues that were discussed in that session include:

  • Use of music on websites (see our guide to Music Rights for Digital Media Companies here)
  • Domain name issues (see our recent post on new domain names here)
  • FTC guidelines on disclosing consideration given to bloggers and other users of social media sites (see our post on that subject here)
  • Legal issues that arise from the social media (see Davis Wright Tremaine’s webcast on the social media, here)
  • Issues in connection with user generated content (see our posts here)

In addition, David conducted a separate seminar on FCC issues facing broadcasters.  A copy of the PowerPoint from that presentation is available here.  Issues discussed in that session included:

  • The FCC’s National Broadband Plan and its impact on television broadcasters (see our post here)
  • The proposed broadcast performance royalty (or performance tax, see our post here)
  • The FCC proceeding on the Future of Media (see our posts here and here)
  • The recent Citizens United decision and its impact on political broadcasting rules (see our description of that case here, and our Political Broadcasting Guide, here)
  • A variety of fines imposed on stations for violations of FCC rules – a summary of many of the recent fines can be found here.

 Broadcasters and others interested in the Digital Media should watch our Blog for future developments on all these issues and the many other legal matters of importance to their businesses.