If you’ve been following the Social Media Law Firm online, you know that we think social media is great! You can connect with potential clients, promote your business to a specific audience, and catch up with friends and family. But social media also carries its own risks. Let’s say you find a post you love on Facebook or Twitter. Can you repost at will, or do you need to take extra steps to protect yourself and your business? You might think posting it on your own page should be fine – after all, social media seems like the wild west of the online world where anything goes – but you’d be wrong.
When you share something original on social media, you retain the rights to it, but that doesn’t mean that someone else won’t see it, steal it, and use it for their own purposes. After all, once you’ve posted something, anyone in the world can take it, and it might be very difficult to enforce your rights and get it back. The opposite is also true. If you find something online and share it with your network, you could be breaking the law.
Let’s say I wanted to create, a funny picture of a cat dancing on a tightrope. I don’t have a cat that can dance on a tightrope, but I saw an image of one on a friend’s page or through a Google search, so I copy it, and I put it on my website. I’m likely committing copyright infringement, assuming someone else owns that photo.
This blows so many people’s minds because if we see it on Facebook or Google, we think that it’s free and available to use. But, if you use this content without permission, you could find yourself on the wrong side of a cease and desist letter if you’ve used that content to promote your products or services.
So, what can you do if you find an image or other content you want to use online? It’s actually easier than you might think. Just ask. If your friend shares content that they’ve created on their own, and you’d like to use it, send them a message to see if you can share it. If they say yes, you’re good to go. If not, say thanks anyway and move on. The last thing you want to do is create social media legal risks for your business, and there are plenty of other images you can use.
Now, let’s say you have original content that you’ve created and you want to share it online. However, this is your content, and you don’t want anyone else to monetize it. What can you do? Two options are to copyright the content or add a watermark. If you don’t take either of those steps and later find someone is using your content, you can contact a copyright attorney and file a copyright infringement lawsuit, which can be costly and time-consuming, or you can send a letter that says, I own this and didn’t give you permission to use it, so you need to take it down before I file suit. Often times, companies will comply to avoid legal action. They’ll even pay money to make the problem go away. But you can’t take advantage of this solution if you don’t protect yourself in the first place.
Want more information about social media copyright laws and how copyright infringement can affect what you’re posting? All you need to do is contact The Social Media Law Firm. As social media attorneys, we can help you protect your business and the content that you post online. Even those funny cat memes.
