Copyright Issues in Fan Fiction

In fan fiction, writers take familiar characters and story elements from existing books, movies, television shows, and popular culture and incorporate them into new stories. Fan fiction is especially popular within online communities, such as FanFiction.net, where fans come together to read and share works. Sparking lively discussion about new scenarios for favorite characters, fan… Continue Reading…

Public Performance Licenses and Music for Your Small Business

Music and musical performances have been essential to many small businesses for creating an engaging customer experience. Establishments such as coffee shops, fashion retailers, and restaurants offer music to enhance the ambiance of their businesses and entertain their customers. These amenities, however, may not come free. Performing rights organizations (PROs), entities that collect performing rights… Continue Reading…

EVENT RECAP: SF Arts Town Hall on 8/20/12

On August 20th, the San Francisco Arts Town Hall was held at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. The purpose of the event was to ignite conversation between the arts community and candidates for the San Francisco Board of Supervisors about the state of arts in San Francisco. It was a packed night with… Continue Reading…

The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) & the Legality of Unpaid Internships

With today’s competitive job market, people can be quick to jump at the opportunity to gain experience—whether they get paid or not. This eagerness is what fuels the market for unpaid internships, where motivated people are looking to enhance their resumes and companies are looking to reduce labor costs. Unpaid internships are common in nonprofits,… Continue Reading…

7 Free & Easy Tools For Measuring Online Marketing Effectiveness

With online marketing quickly becoming an integral part of overall marketing strategy for most companies, it can become difficult to monitor and measure every one of your online marketing efforts. Nowadays, businesses not only have dedicated websites, they also manage a multitude of other online accounts to enhance their web presence. From social media networks… Continue Reading…

The Creative Commons Series – Part 4: Find & Attribute Work

HOW TO FIND CREATIVE COMMONS LICENSED WORK Creative Commons has made it easy for you to find Creative Commons licensed photos, music, videos, and other media with one consolidated website that searches through major sites including Flickr, Google, Google Images, YouTube, and Jamendo. We recommend that you bookmark this link to the Creative Commons search… Continue Reading…

The Creative Commons Series – Part 3: Applying Your License

Creative Commons licenses are powerful tools, enabling work to be easily shared and used. Before you apply any of these licenses, you should know exactly what you’re sharing under what terms. People using your work are depending on you to know! Misunderstanding or ignorance on how to use Creative Commons licenses can lead to costly,… Continue Reading…

The Creative Commons Series – Part 2: Creative Commons Licenses

In Part 1 of this series, you were introduced to Creative Commons, its mission and its impact. Part 2 of this series will specifically discuss Creative Commons licenses, highlighting their specific functions. Copyright is an area of intellectual property law. It provides protection for original works of authorship by giving the copyright owner a bundle of rights… Continue Reading…

The Creative Commons Series – Part 1: An Introduction

If you are an artist, photographer, videographer or writer you may have already heard of Creative Commons. Even if you are a recreational picture-taker who posts the occasional family vacation photo to Flickr you probably noticed a prompt giving you the option to designate a Creative Commons license for the photograph. The terms of these… Continue Reading…

Five Points about the SAG-AFTRA Merger

If you landed on our website, chances are you may be an entertainment professional directly impacted by the merger of SAG and AFTRA. Because there are still a lot of questions and buzz about the issue this blog post will highlight 5 key points (and a bit of history) regarding the SAG-AFTRA merger: Founded in… Continue Reading…