Social Media and Copyright Laws

Steven Brown- Legal Practitioner/ Director of Lynn and Brown Lawyers-  introduces himself and the importance of knowing about social media.

The alarming stats on social media have awestruck the audience when they found out most people in the room have used social media more than once today. In fact, census results show that 79% now use social media which is up 10% from the previous year. Further, over a third of people check social media over five times a day, with more and more people starting to use it in the morning and during lunch breaks.

The current average Facebook user is a 41-year-old woman, with younger demographics predominantly using Instagram and Snapchat, hence it is important to understand which platform to use for your target audiences.

“People want to feel a part of something so they use social media to stay connected and follow brands.” – Steven Brown

Steven then continued to address the issue of copyright when using social media.

As an example, he said, “[The] Horn vs Pacquiao fight on Foxtel was pushed on social media and there were fines everywhere because they had no rights to publish the content.”

The audience began to question the copyright laws leading to Andrew Andrawos’ segment of this session on social media and copyright. Andrew is a broadcaster at 5EBI. 

He continued to show how to “progress to digital” by explaining how his program broadcasts their show through YouTube with the new camera technology available.

Sections of the audience commented on their thoughts on YouTube, Sound cloud and Facebook with the final consensus being that YouTube has the strictest policing.

The session concluded with case studies of previous copyright issues which made the headlines as seen below.

Famous Case Studies:

Madden vs Seafolly Pty Ltd. [2014]: $25k settlement + counter settlement
Wixen Music Publishing vs Spotify [2018]: $55M Settlement; Potentially more than $1.7Bn to be paid

Definition:

Copyright Act 1968 – The exclusive right of an owner to reproduce, use or share material with the public and profit from it.