3 Legal Problems To Avoid While Running A YouTube Business

If you have a unique set of skills, an engaging personality, or the ability to entertain others with ease, then you might be able to generate a nice income from home. Online video hosting sites like YouTube have given average people the opportunity to gain worldwide exposure and capitalize on the videos that they choose to upload.

Cultivating a YouTube business may seem simple enough, but it's important you focus on protecting yourself against negative legal action in the future. A YouTube business should be treated like any other enterprise, and being aware of legal problems you should avoid is the first step in keeping yourself out of legal trouble as your online business grows.

1. Copyright and Ownership Questions

You may assume that since you are the one uploading a video, the content within that video belongs to you. Copyright and digital ownership laws can be tricky to navigate, so it's essential that you establish clear ownership over the content on your channel.

Obtain paperwork stating that all content is your sole property if you choose to work with a videographer to produce content for your channel. If you collaborate with personalities from other channels, determine which of you will retain ownership over the resulting content.

Retaining an attorney can be a helpful way to ensure you have all the right paperwork in place to prove ownership of your content and avoid potential copyright lawsuits from being filed against you.

2. Privacy Infringement

You must be extremely careful when selecting locations where you will shoot your YouTube videos. Featuring individuals in your video that haven't given their permission to be filmed could land you in serious legal trouble.

Have an attorney go over the expectation of privacy guidelines that might affect your filming. People have no expectation of privacy when they are in a public place, but privacy guidelines may prohibit you from filming in a home or private business.

3. Profit Sharing

If you plan to make money off your YouTube channel, you should take every precaution to ensure you are establishing that all profit earned from a specific video will belong to you.

Anyone featured in one of the videos you upload to your channel could come back and request a portion of the profits at a later date should the video go viral. To avoid losing out on valuable income, protect your YouTube business by having waivers available for anyone appearing in your videos to sign.

For more information, talk to a company such as Madden Law Firm The.


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