okay we're broadcasting and waiting for folks to roll in we'll get started in just a few minutes here hi there welcome to our program hey erin we'll get started shortly okay i'm gonna wait like 30 more seconds great so i'm going to get started um hi everybody welcome to today's digital access for the arts program protecting content online legally and secure my name is adam desjardin i'm the programs manager at culturesource for those of you who might not know about culturesource so this is your
first time you know joining us for a culture source program welcome we're so glad to have you here um we are culture source is a regional arts service organization we work to serve the seven counties of southeastern michigan and all of the arts and cultural activity and organizations within those counties we do this work through three different pillars um we do it through programs and convenings which normally are in person but we have you know shifted to virtual um we also do this work through
funding opportunities we re-grant um funding from both you know federal and statewide organizations but then also from foundations um from throughout the region um and we also do this work through research which is a new wing of our work to better understand the needs and address the opportunities for supporting arts and cultural organizations in their needs and what what needs to be addressed so essentially we are here today for our digital access the arts program this is a pretty big program t
hat we've launched this past year that is slowly wrapping up as we reach may um the whole program is four parts um the first part which you're here at is um one of our seven part online programs um this these feature you know local national and international um presenters and speakers and also um you know we've paired them with how to focus hack sessions which are 30-minute you know tactile tactical um programs to really learn you know some sort of how-to content this program specifically will b
e followed by a hack session as well um i'll be sure to share that out shortly um also we apart another part of our program is the tech expert in residence opportunity this is a really great um new program service for us which is providing one-on-one support for arts organizations in their digital strategy ideation and innovation um john riley who is our tech expert in residence is doing a really great job um you know helping folks assess where they're at and their capacity and infrastructure fo
r um as it relates to technology and you know where they you know want to go and aspirationally you know can go but then also what capacity they have to um to get there so yeah please sign up for a meeting with john riley today our tech expert in residence he's really great um and then just closes our research with eight bridges workshop they have been assessing current digital and online capacities of culture source members to better understand how to support the sector they're also known for t
heir research that they did with the national endowment for the arts which was all about arts and the intersection of arts and technology and where artists are working and how to support them um either through funding or through programs um so they've been really close to the arts and tech space and we're really excited um to learn from their research that they just closed um and then the announcements are coming soon for our funding program um in which we're making 16 5 000 grants to culture so
urce member organizations to make investments in sustainable technologies that enhance their digital and online work um really excited about this and you know there were lots of really amazing applications so hopefully we will be announcing that soon um all of this was not created in a vacuum this is all in partnership with rocket community fund specifically the community sponsorships team um there jasmine and leah a huge shout out to them and thank you for their support in this whole program se
ries and the digital access for the arts program as a whole some upcoming programs um to make note of um immediately following this program we will be doing our hack session um with mark majewski from uh rock central he will be leading us on um a deeper dive into cyber security um uh and he created this amazing title called not for profit does not mean not a target um he'll really be you know looking at where and how folks are targeting um nonprofit organizations and what like very skilled like
quick things that you can do to build some skills and also you know create enhance and enhance and protect your organization's work online um so join us for that too um on thursday april 29th we will be doing the second round of um audience outlook monitor updates um for this year this is a research study with wolf brown basically they are serving audiences at arts organizations to better understand where and how they are comfortable with returning to art spaces and so basically this will be a r
esearch report out um on the 29th about the april data and where and how people are feeling about returning to museums and performing arts centers and all that so feel free to check that out and also you know register for that program it's always really great information about um the art space and and also just the greater you know world and comfortability as it pertains to returning back to art spaces um on wednesday may 5th we'll be doing our next digital access for the arts program this will
be with a bridge's workshop sarah lopman who's the principal there she will be um you know presenting a smorgasbord for lack of a better word on all of the arts and technology research she and her team have been doing um over the past year um there's lots of really fascinating stuff that she'll be presenting on as it pertains to arts and technology and where it's going and where um where and how you know your organization can be thinking about the future of arts and technology and where technolo
gy intersects in your work um and you know where artists and how to support artists who are working at the intersection of arts and technology are too so feel free to join us for that and then immediately following that program we'll do a hack session on nfts which are crazy new um fangled technology i don't really even know really like what to call them but they are changing the art market and i just read a really amazing atlantic article about them on the other day and we're really excited to
be doing a program on this kind of emergent trend as it pertains to arts and technology too of note some funding opportunities we are the regional re-granter for the michigan council for arts and cultural affairs um we and by regional re-grant i mean we are the re-granter for wayne county specifically um if you're in washington county it's the arts alliance if you're in macomb county it is um the uh anton center for the arts but we will be re-granting arts equipment and supplies grants and also
bus grants so if you know anybody who works in the k-12 space do check those out my colleague penny maria is dropping them in the chat the applications are due next friday april 16th and then also a more nationally based funding opportunity via bloomberg philanthropies is the asphalt art initiative this is helping cities use art and community engagement to improve street safety and revitalize public space as a proud pedestrian bike rider this is just a really great opportunity to you know make o
ur streets safer and also um you know give funding to cities specifically to do arts um programming and our you know public art projects um so if you know any anybody who works at the city level um for anybody in our region this is also a national focus so maybe you have a cousin in puerto rico who works for a city government for the city municipality of san juan like send it that their way it's a great opportunity um our graphic recorder today is yanazaro um she will be um graphic recording a c
onversation and presentations we're always glad to have her here again as an artist um and graphic recorder and activist um who is beaming in from ypsilanti we are so grateful to have her part take in this whole program series um a huge shout out and thank you to all of our wonderful partners who um support us in supporting the arts and cultural sector here in southeast michigan there are many and we are very thankful for their support and also their partnership and co-thinking on program design
and funding opportunities and everything that helps us support the arts and cultural sector here um and without further ado we are here for protecting online content legally insecure we'll be hearing from the legal perspective from carolyn giordano and anita marinelli from the law firm of miller canfield who will talk specifically about intellectual property and copyright and you know how to protect content legally online and then john oberheid from duo security and um cisco who will really be
zooming in on cyber security for nonprofits so really excited to be pairing these two and three really um because there's three people but two concepts um and and content experts um in this program today and we're glad you're joining us too um also this program will be recorded and we'll be sharing it out i'm following the program too so without further ado i'm going to welcome carolyn and anita um to the virtual stage to um present and join us carolyn anita thanks for being here from windsor an
d ann arbor thank you very much adam and it's it's great to be here um as adam said today we're going to be talking about protecting your online content legally at least anita and i are um and we're going to be speaking specifically about two kinds of intellectual property that are important for artists and content creators to understand that's copyright and trademark and we're also going to discuss some particular issues that crop up when we're dealing with your ip that is posted online so star
ting out with copyright just broadly what is copyright so the frameworks of our constitution understood that works of original authorship had value that should be protected and they gave authors and inventors the exclusive right to their works for limited times and the reason to do this legally to give the exclusive right to authors and content creators is not only to recognize that these things have value but also to encourage artists and scientists to continue to create the original works so c
opyright exists for original works of authorship that are fixed in a tangible medium of expression and so what does that mean that just means that copyright needs to be minimally very minimally original and it needs to be fixed which means sufficiently permanent enough to be copied written down reproduced etc so once once you create an original work that is fixed you automatically have a copyright in the works so if i sit here and and draw a picture of a bowl of fruit on a napkin um and it's fix
ed uh i have a copyright in that by law that's that's all you need for it so copyrightable subject matter i have a list of copyrightable subject matter up right here as you can see copyright protects all manner of artistic works it's really the province the ip province of the arts interestingly it also protects computer programs and categorizes computer programs as literary works which i always think is funny um so copyright writes copyright gives the artist or the owner of the copyright today w
e're talking about artists a number of different exclusive rights number one the right to reproduction of the artistic work that means only you can reproduce the copies uh the right to modification and adaptation of the artwork also the ability to prepare derivative works of the original artwork for instance if you have a story you that you've written you also have the exclusive right to uh to produce the sequel to the story uh copyright gives you the right of course to distribute your artwork b
y right by license sale or rental um the it gives you the opportunity and the right to perform your artwork publicly and to display it publicly however copyright even though copyright gives you a lot of exclusive rights there are also limits on copyright protection it only copyright only protects expression it doesn't protect underlying ideas so it also so it excludes underlying ideas procedures processes methods systems etc and so for instance you can't copyright a color you can't copyright a l
ist of instructions uh you can't copyright a recipe and you can't copyright an invention and the reason you can't do this is because uh you want to we don't want to allow copyright law to monopolize ideas and stifle competition and creative progress so i said uh earlier that i have a copyright as soon as i i draw my little picture on a napkin but if i automatically have a copyright as soon as that happens um why would i ever register a copyright and you probably have heard about copyright regist
ration well there are a lot of benefits to copyright registration um first of all it's relatively inexpensive it's about 45 to 65 dollars you can file a registration application online with the copyright office which is www.copyright.gov which is a very very helpful extremely helpful website and pretty user friendly um but most importantly you need to have your copyright registered to be able to bring an action that is a lawsuit for copyright infringement so registration is really the key to you
r your ability to actually enforce a copyright registration gives you gives you the ability to enforce it and ultimately to receive uh money damages if you prevail in your copyright infringement lawsuit um more generally registration signals to the public that you care enough about your your art and your intellectual property to to take that extra step to protect it so copyright infringement basically copyright infringement is the legal violation of uh the copyright law so if anyone infringes on
any of those exclusive rights that i mentioned earlier you can bring a lawsuit or copyright infringement provided that you've registered your copyright and i have the remedies listed here i won't go into them but probably the most salient is the money damages that's seven hundred fifty dollars to thirty thousand dollars per uh infringed work um as as considered by the court so now more than ever when we're talking about online you know a lot of copyright infringement is occurring online uh when
we're dealing with artistic works online it's incredibly important to ask yourself if you have permission for the artworks that you're posting uh permission you'll often hear it called licensing um in the ipa context but licensing and permission are essentially the same thing um and one one reason it's important to get permission for posting online works is that publishing companies or copyright rights organizations hire people to scour the internet for unauthorized use of copyrighted works so
these organizations will hit the user up uh with the threat of copyright infringement lawsuit in order to get the user the poster of the copyrighted work to settle a lawsuit for before it happens that is to to pay to pay the copyright owner money if you don't pay the money um these organizations will continue to bother and hound you and make life difficult for you and ultimately they may file a lawsuit against you and um it you know in many cases the copyright infringer the person or organizatio
n posting copyrighted work has absolutely no idea that they're doing anything wrong um or you know or that they're doing anything wrong so our our law firm interestingly enough actually got to know the folks at culturesource a few years ago through a small copyright issue that they ran into on this topic so this story is it's a good reminder of how many copyright issues can emerge online simply when you think you're you're doing something totally above board that everybody else does so the story
is that a a few years ago a culture source member museum was running a film and culture source promoted the film on their website the museum had a full copyright rights to run the film and gave culture source i believe a press release and then a culture source posted the press release on their website along with what i believe was a still photo from the film um and the photo was just a photo of a guy talking it wasn't even really an interesting photo um but they just posted this up online with
the press release um so this is again something that companies do all the time um and and no idea that anything is being untoured or anything at all um so after culture source posted this this uh press release with a photograph they received a letter from an attorney from a cop copyright watchdog organization stating it represented the rights of the copyright holder in the image and um we believe you've infringed our copyright and please can you pay us a licensing fee of x amount of dollars and
not not insubstantial amount right so um our firm came in to look at this and we did some due diligence and this was in fact a representative of the copyright owner in the photograph of the rights holder and we helped negotiate a favorable resolution to that um small dispute but in part we were able to do that because of happy uh culture sources uh nonprofit mission and what it was but the long long and short of it is that that's not a good situation it's not a situation you want to find yoursel
f in because the truth is even if you have good intentions and you don't realize that you're posting somebody else's copyrighted content that doesn't necessarily really matter and and you can be on the hook for um for copyright infringement if you um if you're not careful about what you post so make sure you have permission for the copyrighted works you are posting online um that being said are there any exceptions to permission so yes there are um the biggest exception by far is fair use you ma
y have heard of this if there are some artists in the audience there um so by far the most crucial issue when we're considering whether there's a potential risk of copyright infringement is whether the use in question is uh the allegedly infringing use can be characterized as fair use so fair use is a statutory exception to copyright protection and when courts are considering whether a use is fair they have a four factor balancing test none of these factors alone is um dispositive the court sort
of looks at all of them and and makes uh makes a judgment but the first factor is probably not probably it is definitely the most important so the first factor is the purpose and character of the work used including whether such use is of a commercial nature or as for nonprofit purposes so as i said this is the single most important factor in recent cases and what the court looks at here uh is does the new use of the of the copyrighted work create create something transformative does it create
something with new meaning new expression such that the original work is transformed so a sort of classic example of this is parody uh parody is a very good example of fair use so if you think about a weird owl song if you know weird al that's parody right he's he's taking original famous songs that we all know and taking a lot of elements from them but also transforming them into something that is funny and often comments on the original very likely to be seen as fair use because it's a parody
um the second or the sort of factor 1a is to what extent is the work commercial um the less commercial work the more nonprofit of work the more likely it is to be seen as fair use which i think is probably good for everybody in the audience here that being said that factor is not dispositive at all uh number two is the nature of the work used creative works usually get more copyright protection than others so it's you're you're less likely to have a fair use defense if you're happy if you're um
accused of of infringing a creative work and historical scientific uh non-fiction works receive the less less copyright protection under this analysis um unpublished works tend to get more copyright protection than published works under this analysis um and and that's just that's just tends to be the way it's shaken out in the cases um the third factor is the amount and substantiality of the portion of the copyrighted work used so here the court looking at this would take into account both the q
uantity of what the infringer accused infringer took from the original work and the quality so the more you take you know the less likely it's going to be fair use and um did you did you take something that was a really important part of the original work right so if you in your uh novel quote the most important part of a previous novel right or you know the the part that everybody knows it's it's less likely to be seen as a fair use because you're taking the most important part um and number fo
ur the last factor in the fair use analysis is the effect of the infringing or potentially infringing use on the market for the original work so the more transformative the use the less likely there's a strong harmful market effect on the original work one way to think about this factor is to look at the harm to the market for potential derivatives of the underlying work so you can ask yourself is that secondary work potentially infringing work uh likely to substitute in the market for the origi
nal there's a famous copyright case about this called well it's informally called the harry potter lexicon case and in this case um jk rowling obviously the hugely famous author of the hugely famous harry potter series um sued the publisher of a reference book uh that that an author made a reference book of harry potter stuff i don't know exactly what was in the reference book but it was not sanctioned by jk rowling but it had to do with all of the stuff in the books and uh jk rowling sued said
this was copyright infringement and the uh author of the reference book said no no no this is fair use we're just taking elements of the harry potter books and we're rearranging them and we're creating something transformative and new and the court said no you're not in a sense essence this is not fair use because your reference book is harming the potential market for jk rowling's um ability to do her own reference book with her own copyrighted work and in fact i think she had several books tha
t were sort of like reference books that she had not yet published that she wanted to so the court said if this cuts into the market for that um that's an indication that this isn't fair use um so that's just a really quick um we could spend hours and hours and hours on fair use but that's just a really quick summary um the important thing thing to take away from this though is it's you don't necessarily really want to rely on the idea that you think your use is fair because it's a very unpredic
table analysis and you can't just assume that what you're doing is fair use and even if you're right you might have to go to court to prove it so um so that's that's my cautionary questionary tale on that um another exception to copyright permission that you may have heard of is public domain so public domain works are works that for one reason or another are not governed by copyright and are free for everyone to use generally these are works out of copyright created before 1926 in the united st
ates um you know listed some examples up there obviously all of shakespeare moby dick little women you know beethoven all of these um works that are old enough that you can use them freely without threat of copyright infringement um and then i think we have just a couple visuals of works that are in the public domain as well and then um back to getting permission i mentioned i think the most important thing that everyone should should think about in this audience is making sure they have permiss
ion for the works that they post so here are just some steps to think about if you have a copyrighted work that you want to post online um you know you want to identify the owner of of the work sometimes that's really easy and it's just a person or entity often though there are rights organizations that you need to contact the creative commons i've just listed or sorry not creative commons copyright clear and center is one um ascap csac and bmi which are called the performance rights organizatio
ns um are for musical works you often will contact those but if you do a little bit of googling on this you can usually find who you need to contact they want they want to make it easy for you to contact them because they uh want your licensing fees so so find the owner or licensing organization and then think about what what uses or what rights you want to license right um you may only need permission for some rights for instance you may want to perform a play but you don't necessarily want dis
tribution rights for the play so just think about what what parts of the copyright rights you need um obviously get the cost for permission any rights organizations will give you the cost gladly and then make sure you get your permission or your license in writing and uh all that being said if you're if you are posting your own original images or uh online i just wanted to give you a few tips for maybe making it a little little um harder for for infringement to occur even though infringement occ
urs a lot online for images especially you can use low resolution images um if they print poorly and there's less of a chance of copying you can add a watermark obviously a watermark shows that it's someone else's work the same with the copyright notice you can put that little c um with your name if it's your own work without being registered you don't need to register to do that and and that's kind of puts people on notice that that's a copyrighted work you can make your contact information cle
ar near the work so you're easy to contact for someone to seek your own permission to use it um disable the right click function apparently the right click function makes it easier for others to save your images to their devices so if you disable right click that can help a little bit with the uh infringement potential and finally if you see someone who you think is infringing your copyrighted work online call them up or maybe email them or contact them and you know politely suggest to them that
this is your work and can they can they cease and desist from posting it and and a lot of times people don't even know that they're doing this and and we'll take it down um and you know if they refuse to take it down that's another issue and maybe you know at that point you think about going further but um always best to be polite and see where you can get with that so with that i will i will um hand the baton over to anita and i think she's gonna talk a little bit more about copyright and then
trademark great thanks carolyn um so defteling into what um caroline was just talking about um the digital millennium copyright act is actually another tool in a copyright owner's tool about that they can use to remove infringing content um so basically the the dmca as it's known is a law that specifically addresses how copyright infringement are handled when they happen online um so in the late 90s this started to become more of a problem and so congress enacted the dmca to try and deal with t
his and it's essentially got two main prongs so the first prong is to help um internet service providers so the big guys like google um who owns youtube all of those sort of companies deal with infringement claims that get lobbied at them for things that are posted online um youtube doesn't want to be liable if there is a copyrighted movie on their website and so what the dmca basically does is it creates provisions that help them avoid any liability which are known as safe harbor provisions so
if these larger um service providers do certain things then they can't be held liable um and and so most of the requirements under the dmz require them to have some sort of reporting portal where people can report infringement and that helps them avoid any liability um now when it comes to individuals so if you've reached out politely as carolyn suggested the infringer digs their heels in says no i'm not going to the dmca allows individual copyright owners to send um they're called dmca takedown
notices and basically what that means is you can send out a notice and slowly strip away um the infringing material from online um it's not a complicated process um but it's certainly not simple and it is something most people go through a lawyer just because there is a lot of follow-up um required and i mean a simple example of this it just came across my feed this morning um so a picture of khloe kardashian was posted yesterday um it was an unedited photo of her she clearly didn't like it and
her lawyers went to work stat said this is her photo she took the photo and it's nearly been scrubbed from the internet and so i mean that's more of a tabloid way that this can happen but that is what you can do essentially just remove all of the copyrighted material um through this process and with enough gusto they usually move pretty quick um and something new that i'm just going to briefly touch on um the congress last year enacted legislation that is going to create a copyright claims boar
d um and especially for smaller organizations and artists um the threat of a federal lawsuit is very um scary and daunting um and for smaller artists who own copyrights it just might not be feasible to go through the entire litigation process so essentially what the copyright claims were it's almost like a small claims court for individual copyright holders it's got a quicker resolution time there um i think the the goal time for for the resolution of a claim is 120 days the damages are limited
and it's a much simpler process um and so the goal with this is to help individual copyright owners um for about lack of better word sue infringers without having to follow the formalities of federal court which is very very daunting and very very expensive um now this doesn't come into effect until i believe it's later this year yeah december 27th of this year so it's unclear how this is going to affect the copyright infringement landscape um and whether those those companies that carolyn was t
alking about who sent you nasty grams asking you to pay will threaten this instead it's unclear how how it'll shake out but as an individual copyright owner it's something that you could use um to enforce your rights without having to go to court i mean just shifting gears slightly so that's more of protecting i guess your your creations and content and how to not misuse other people's um something that ties in with this also is how you present yourself online and how you brand yourself online u
m and that often relates to trademarks and actually in adam's intro earlier you'll notice he put up a whole uh myriad of images and logos of the companies who support culture source and and those are called their trademarks that is how they present themselves to the to the world basically in a commercial context and so um it's how people distinguish themselves and so you'll see on the top row i have some of the more uh bigger compa the bigger companies and on the bottom you'll see i actually pul
led this from culture sources website as well these are their supporters these are their members um and so you don't have to be a massive organization like coca-cola or google to have a trademark you can be a small organization comes up with a logo or a name and that's how you identify yourself um and so the purpose is is basically that it's to identify yourself and distinguish your goods or services from someone else in the marketplace and it helps consumers identify oh i know that's coke oh i
know this is google oh um and it helps with that recognition factor um and so as you're thinking about how you're going to present your businesses online as we move into more of a um digital sphere lately um you want to think about selecting a trademark that um is strong so there's a gradient of trademarks um and essentially you want something that is as fanciful or arbitrary as possible so um something like kodak kodak doesn't mean it doesn't really mean anything it doesn't put in your mind um
really anything in particular probably now it does for photography but at the time it didn't um same thing with with apple apple yes when you think of an apple you think of the fruit and apple but you don't think of a computer and so those are those are good trademarks for those particular brands um when you look at the generic side of things and generic trademarks and descriptive trademarks actually aren't registerable so you want to stay away from those those are things that just describe what
you're doing so the water channel that's an obvious one and you know if you had dave's carpet cleaning company that's another one so you want to try and avoid those and pick something a little bit more um fanciful or arbitrary if you're really trying to differentiate yourself online um and then there's proper trademark usage and this applies to when you use your own trademarks as well as if you're using um someone else's so on on culture sources website for instance they put the logos up of the
of the companies that support them and that's that's the proper way to use their trademarks they're the logos that they put out we're also going to use the same um if you were just using words you always want to make sure that your trademark stands out from the text that surrounds it um use capital letters bold colors um you want to make sure that it stands out that hey this is a trademark this isn't just a regular word um another thing you want to make sure you do is never use a trademark as a
verb googling is a very very common one and i wonder how much further we'll have to go before that that causes a real problem for them but but it's a google search um it's not googling so that's that's a big one um and um you always want to make sure that you use the proper trademark form and spelling um you want to be consistent how you're using your trademark you don't want to have five different spellings you don't want to have five different versions you want to make sure that you're consis
tent in what you're using um the other thing you can do to make sure you're using a trademark properly is you can register it with the us trademark office and when you register a trademark you get to use that little r symbol so as where carolyn was talking about copyrights you can put that little c symbol as soon as you create a picture you don't need to register it trademarks is a little bit different trademarks you can only put the r symbol when you have a registration so if you choose not to
register which is totally fine you can use different marks um so a superscript tm or sm tm for trademark sm if you're offering services for service mark um those are for marks that aren't registered so as soon as you come up with something you can put a superscript tm and that means it's your trademark but it's not registered um you don't want to use the circle r unless you have a registration um because there are penalties if someone wants to call you out on that um and this just goes back to w
hat i was talking about with respect to proper trademark usage and my googling example um if improper trademark usage over time can actually defeat your trademark um and so xerox is is a really powerful example i mean it became synonymous with photocopying um so yeah just go xerox that um there's another example as well i don't know how many of you saw it was about two or three years ago um the makers of velcro put out a video in which they went through all of the trademarks that have been prett
y much just died over time because they just become so common so velcro is the brand hook and loop is what velcro actually is which i have never heard anybody say that before rollerblading that's another one rollerblading is is the brand it's just become synonymous with inline skating google is moving in that direction and there's always this push back and you'll see every every year lawyers will get together and is google dead yet um and you often see those blog those blog posts come out um so
yeah that's one that they're trying very hard to defeat that um and so that's why it's so important because if your trademark is misused enough you can essentially lose it um so so that's why it's important um and i talked about how you don't have to register a trademark similar to copyright you don't have to um the benefits are it puts everybody on notice that you do have a trademark and you can also um attain the benefits of federal registration in terms of suing um on your federal registered
mark you can also see when an unregistered trademark but you can't using the federal rules you're stuck in kind of common law and it gets a little bit messier um it also adds a layer of protection when you get registered in that your registration becomes um incontestable after a certain period of time and certain period of use and so no one can really challenge your mark after that um barring you know if you messed up when you first did the registration or you were fraudulent or made some mistak
es that way but it adds a layer of protection um and you get to use that fancy arsenal as i said um and just to touch on what happens for you if you find someone using your mark that you've selected and you have registered or if you find yourself on the other side of a nasty gram where you've used someone else's mark improperly um the there is federal trademark infringement law and and the penalties are are similar to to copyright law um and so infringement occurs where a person uses a mark in c
omet in commerce excuse me and it is counterfeit or it is related to um the offer of sale distribution advertising of goods or services that aren't basically uh attached to the registrant um and and the test here is it doesn't have to be identical it's in that's a long eight factor test and it's just whether it's likely to cause confusion um and so that is it that is a core test and it takes a long time and a lot of money to litigate which is why you want to avoid trademark infringement as much
as possible and why if someone is using your mark that's what you want to look at is someone going to confuse whatever mark that person is using with the mark that i have registered um and and yeah it's not the funnest thing to to explain um in a court of law and it does cost my so we want to try and avoid it as much as possible which is why proper trademark usage is so important and with that i think we're going to go to questions after so i think i will turn it over to adam again great yeah th
ank you both so much i have i'm like i've learned a lot already and i have lots of questions but i'll save it to the end and also you know when you when you mentioned anita at one point like the beginning presentation i was like oh my gosh like what did i do wrong like am i gonna get king of gold you know where where i use logos where i use you know photos and all that um too and protecting it and hopefully you know folks tuning in will also find it relevant as they reflect on their own work too
thank you both so much i'm gonna pass over to john again if you guys have questions um for the folks tuning in um please feel free to drop them in the chat or also raise your hand and we'll try um to um to have you ask your questions out loud um you're the end of the program so once once john um is done presenting here john the floor is yours thank you adam and uh thanks thanks for having me here um i will uh try not to bore you with too many slides here um but i uh have just a taste just a lit
tle amuse boosh powerpoint that'll hopefully uh set us up for a good interactive discussion so uh you know we're kind of shifting the conversation to talk a little bit about cyber security at non-profits um i would start by saying cyber security is impossibly unapproachable right you're sitting there and you're like how do i how do i manage this you might hear in the headlines that you know the russian gru has compromised the you know software supply chain of the us government through a vendor c
alled solarwinds you're sitting there like yeah that's sounds terrifying like how do i how do i stand the chance so hopefully we can we can simplify a little bit in this conversation of what you can do to at least raise the bar a little bit um for your organization your nonprofit to have a good cyber security posture so um a lot of cyber security is like this this gate here you know it's it's good intentioned uh you know there was a a some thought process behind it um but largely ineffective and
this is what we call security theater you know things that might sound like a good idea but don't actually mitigate risk for your organization and in the real world uh probably the most infamous example is you know tsa airport security go through a lot of steps you know you get pat downs you get searched you know there's lots of things that might make you feel safe but in reality it might not be actually reducing reducing risk for for yourself or for tsa in the cyber world this might be things
like like antivirus like it's not a bad thing but it doesn't make you invincible on the internet and you still need kind of safe computing practices on the other hand uh particularly us security practitioners like we like to maybe you know go to one extreme or the other uh too often there's a lot of security controls out there that might be too effective like no one's getting in this gate you know that's for sure like this is a really good lock you're never never getting that gate open uh in oth
er words a lot of security is not actually usable by humans and that that balance of security and usability is is is truly critical so maybe at a you know a past corporate job if you had to share a file with a colleague you had to fire up your corporate laptop you had to log into the vpn you didn't jump through a bunch of hoops uh just to use the on-premise you know file server to share that that file and that's a that's a problem because if you make it really painful and complicated to do a bas
ic task in the the name of security then you know i is an employee i'm just going to use dropbox to share the file or i'm going to air drop you know the file to my my colleague for my iphone so this this balance of of um kind of risk management is really important it's like how do we do things that make us safe but that are also aligned with you know the usability expectations of our our people and the needs of our organization so cyber security is all about this balance it's all about operating
in a gray area because there are there's no silver bullets you know there's no such thing as being 100 secure and actually being secure might mean something entirely different to different people or different organizations so that might uh that might seem complicated but it turns out cyber security is actually not that complicated it's just another form of risk management which you know whether you realize it or not you're practicing on a daily basis you know in your life or in your your busine
ss so this here is is kind of the foundation of risk management you have assets they might have weaknesses and there's threats out there that want to take advantage of those weaknesses and that creates risk so um ignore the fact that this looks like a math equation you're not actually trying to calculate anything but just use this as a frame of reference so security is all about what you do with that that risk you can mitigate and try to reduce that risk or in a lot of cases you can actually acc
ept that risk and move on as a as an organization and you know you might use a similar framework to think about uh copyright like we talked about today like what are your assets and how are you protecting them with the tools available to you provided by you know copyright or trademark law so um i don't know if i could pull up the chat here i wanted to throw it out to you guys in the audience um since you're the experts in your own domain like what are what are some of the things that are worth p
rotecting in your non-profit organization you know throw any quick ideas you have in the chat here and i'll see if i can uh i can pull that up there's no no bad answers no wrong answers here just fire away what are things that are important that you would want to protect for your organization i'll let people noodle on it for a second there we go we got login credentials that's really good you got tax identification or tax information employee identification numbers those two are very interrelate
d because if you steal the login credentials maybe you could get access to the employee identification numbers or other pii as you might hear it any other thoughts like what's that what's the heart and soul of a non-profit we got our database our email accounts our web server a lot of infrastructure donation account tax information hr id that's really critical if you're a non-profit and you you fund your your operations through donations if uh if something happens there and you you know you you
lose your your financial wherewithal to operate then you know your mission's at risk so those are those are uh we've got one more website content um yes in your public-facing materials um ties very closely into reputation as well so those are some some areas that um are really important for nonprofits your donors their sense of information your finances you want to protect your your money that you you have to operate the organization your reputation um even just your operational capabilities you
know your nonprofit exists for submission and you want to avoid disruption of your operations so you know some of the threats there um which were some of which were highlighted uh if i can steal your login credentials if i can phish your users if i can trick you into giving up your password i might be able to perform what's known as account takeover i can access your email i can access your collaboration tools potentially access your financial accounts and other systems and all the information
that's stored in there is now at risk there's also some widespread threats of social engineering there's a um a technique called business email compromise um where if i trick you into initiating a wire transfer um to my you know overseas bank account i can really easily commit wire fraud and steal money and there's things like malware and ransomware that can actually have a pretty you know substantial impact on your operations as an organization if i lock up all your your you know your computers
and your data and your infrastructure it can take you you know weeks months to clean up and in that time again you're not focused on your mission you're focused on trying to respond to this cyber attack so those are some of the challenges that um i think are not specific to nonprofits but um particularly for for small organizations that don't have a lot of budget a lot of expertise a lot of resources they might be at or below like the security poverty line like you can barely afford to you know
protect yourself um with the the limited resources you have um those are real challenges that um that we need to deal with and here's a couple just uh you know examples of those threats the first one is uh business email compromise an attacker would spoof an email from you know say your your executive director or your ceo and send it to your cfo or send it to finance leader or treasurer saying yeah urgent need to you know wire eighty thousand dollars to this bank account you receive this you sa
y of course i'm going to go do that my executive director just told me to and you wake up you know this happens friday you know an hour before the fedwire window closes the attackers are no dummies and you you notice this monday when you come back in and the money's already gone and is you know unretrievable that happens far too frequently and it's a really cheap and easy attack for attackers to basically spam out to every organization on the internet this other one this was a headline from yest
erday so fresh off the presses um a cyber criminal uh ransomware gang has you know kind of deployed their ransomware across a florida school district and is demanding 40 million dollars to unlock their data and their machines and their infrastructure so that's a big bill and you know they must not understand the u.s public school system if they think that we've got 40 million dollars to spare to pay this ransom um but you know what else are you going to do in that case you have to rebuild all of
your infrastructure which is incredibly you know expensive and challenging as well so um you're like this is this is neat john but just tell me what to do so the good news is that you know securing yourself online is not actually that complicated you can take some some very small accessible steps that make a really big difference in your your online security posture and it really boils down to how you secure your account logins so you can do things like enable multi-factor authentication for yo
ur email for your collaboration services for your financial accounts it's much more widely available in the the modern day and um that's pretty accessible you should be able to do that across your team if you can take it a step up you can actually leverage a password manager to augment that to help deal with the sprawl of of passwords especially for things where you might have a shared account like maybe of a shared twitter account maybe a shared bank account and securely sharing um those creden
tials is is really important another part is around the devices and applications you use you know really modernizing your fleet of devices and the services that you choose to operate your your nonprofit um it seems uh it seems small but having uh relatively you know if you're if you've got those windows 7 laptops you know get some new ones to go to windows 10 if you've got you know really out of date mobile devices either android or iphone devices you know kind of refreshing those devices and ma
king sure they're up to date is some of the most important things you can do to you know secure your your organization and generally you know leverage the cloud if you can minimize the amount of infrastructure you have if you can leverage things like g suite and office 65 and box you're not only getting probably better productivity better collaboration on your team but with less things to manage there's less cost for you and actually less risk because you can bet that google and microsoft and bo
x and all these providers are investing a lot in security which means you don't have to invest as much in security and if you do these things you're you're eliminating a a huge chunk of risk of being online and of course if you've more questions we can we can dive into that in the q a but i did want to leave you with this uh this quote from mark from his upcoming session of not-for-profit does not mean not a target you might not be a top target of you know foreign state-sponsored intel groups bu
t you do have assets that are valuable to a broad swath of cyber criminals out there so again the good news is that cybersecurity is not as complex as it might seem and hopefully you have some some new ways to think about it thank you thanks so much john this is um really great um and yeah i've laughed a few times i mean the like the 40 million thing is crazy that is such a lot i mean these cyber criminals i think that's kind of across the board in both of your presentations it's just like it re
ally is like a shot in the dark when it comes to both you know the legal like khloe kardashian you know the 40 million requests from cyber security it just is very random and i think you know being able to be prepared um regardless but legally and cyber secure wise is like essential for organizations i mean you know as um carolyn noted our our own copyright um case you know connected us to the lawyers of another canfield um but then also you know thinking about cyber security i often sometimes g
et emails from our executive director omari that say hey can you do this task for me and it's in my spam and he would never i mean he doesn't ask me like he doesn't use the word task he's like you know usually calls me so um that's something we've been thinking about too is like okay how do we actually you know make our our work more cyber secure as well um so yeah i appreciate all the all the um you know insights that you both shared um and i also encourage um folks tuning in with their questio
ns to raise their hand which is uh at the bottom of your zoom um chat or zoom you know platform and so feel free to raise your hand and i'll unmute you and um we can have you know have you join the conversation and you know make any questions or comments um so i'm gonna preface with that first so um ava ava i'm gonna allow you to talk and um you will be able to ask your question hi everybody it's ava hi adam hi ava good to see you yeah and thank you for this incredibly helpful and efficient prog
ram um well yeah that four million dollars sounds like a parody almost like making fun out of the system so yeah um a lot of beautiful things came to mind a couple of things i just want to quickly um talk about one is that so a few years ago a photographer very randomly in downtown took my image and then uh about a couple of months after i see a colleague and then they say wow we see this massive portrait of you as a part of this mosaic um you know portrait wall inside the uh quicken loans on th
e wall and i was furious because all of my work professionally and personally is focused on like healing the land and it it was just i didn't know what to do uh i never signed anything with the photographer obviously and um i was not informed that my portrait was on the wall and i had no idea how long it was on that wall representing the exact company that my work is kind of against stuff and uh endangering my reputation i'm still furious of it i emailed the photographer back then they apologize
d and brought the photo down but still it didn't uh manage the harm that uh impacted me as a local organizer um so yeah that was just like something i wanted to share and get some clarity in terms of what i could have done or like um you know how i maybe could ask more information now after a couple of years that's that another thing was so since 2010 i've been doing online uh curatorial programs events workshops uh festivals you name it connecting distance uh locations in 2017 we launched our u
h telepresence festival remote and um since then we have been actively doing online programming that year i had some conversations with some lawyers for getting a trademark but at the same time because our work was kind of anti-commerce anti-capitalism uh we decided to not trademark long story short when the pandemic hit uh we see all over the media this new music festival that they claim they're the first in the world and it was just again disappointing to know that we have been doing this work
for the past 10 years and now suddenly everybody's claiming to be the first and who cares who's the first but that was like at the other moment that we're like oh as we do our radical decapitalizing decolonizing work how could we be more strategic in relation to navigating the actual loops and um you know moments that are needed to protect our intellectual uh labor and our community and at the moment we are expanding more also as an online anti-oppression independent uh tv embracing more our li
ke independent media uh identity and we are getting more uh you know notif notices from uh the international national local organizations museums they are screening and showing our work we get more like circulations online so we are in this phase of trying to uh come up with an uh practical process for distributing the payments and making sure that all the artists always get credited so i just thought that i would really appreciate if there would be maybe a a you know um possibility for an appoi
ntment with the lawyers for talking further about this and uh just figuring out a process that could make sure that uh when we do uh presentations of the work let's say uh an example is that in the current museum at the mocap they showed one of our videos there's a very small stipend of like 500 dollars that comes to the non-profit and from that money i want to make sure that each and every contributing artist get a cut and then the institution gets the cut and we are now writing the contracts f
or what would that look like in terms of copyright and also distributing the uh resources and income thank you so much for the time thanks ava and for everybody um ava is working with poet societies and um they're really great organizations so yeah thanks for being here ava um and you know i i'm hearing i think in in your question you know the the topic of mutuality which was something that i was i was curious about when carolyn and anita were presenting to you know we think about not only prote
cting our own organization but then also or like the artists that we're working with but then also vice versa too you know it's like when we're collaboratively you know sharing an image how are we you know presenting what's like oh like this is how i protect the image and you will ensure that you'll protect the image this way too so i think you know that i think your first question kind of really speaks to that and i'm wondering if um anita or carolyn have any you know best practices or insights
as it pertains to that or anything else you that you were thinking about when ava was speaking to you should i go first um on the on the photograph uh that was put up at the quicken loans building of you i i'm afraid that i i don't know how much you could have done other than what you did do which i think was the right thing to do um so if if the if the photographer took a photo of you um you don't necessarily have a copyright in that photo right because they took it they have a copyright in it
should they be posting it without your permission no but that's not necessarily a copyright infringement issue it's more of a right to your likeness or a rite of publicity issue um which is a slightly different um area of law but i think i'm not sure what you could have done honestly other than ask them to take it down you know i think that's the right response um if if they had kept it up and if you could prove that you were losing money in some way or you were losing a business reputation in
some way i mean i suppose you could have a potential legal action but you know those things are expensive so i i think um the the best thing to do is to just request that this be taken down and and hope that hope for the best um because it you wouldn't necessarily have a copyright in an image that somebody else took of you you i mean you it's not you wouldn't necessarily you would not have it because you didn't create that image even though it's of your face um so i wha what were the second ques
tions i think the second question was kind of just about how to best prepare um your organization's um you know or like the when you're working with like an artist for example or like in the photo case like you know if the press release for example like when right that our way and you know there's there's some sort of having to deal with like a shared understanding of the copyright as it pertains to their work involved and so i'm wondering you know are there best practices um you know other than
just like sharing like the the as you detailed in the presentation like the different like sort of um ways that you can mention the copyright but to really ensure like hey i'm sharing this press release these are you know is it just being like overly detailed or you know how do you see folks best kind of like approaching the mutuality of like sharing content between two different parties yeah i mean i i think it's um i think it's just unfortunately being really vigilant and checking every time
that that um whoever's content you're posting hat is is authorized right and has the appropriate licensing and i think and just to use that i i don't want to come back to culture you know because this was just a very small issue um that was corrected but you know i mean just uh you know the the film itself was licensed but um the underlying photograph wasn't so ev every time you're posting something that's not your original stuff just make sure you have if you have permission to use it and in th
at case it would have been going back and making sure you had the permission to use the still image online or whatever um and it and it goes for artists that you're working in conjunction with too because if if you're using other people's work in your own um installation you know you can you can be caught up in a copyright claim as well anita do you have no i i was gonna touch on her i think she had a third question about okay um they mentioned that they were the first and then other people were
claiming they were the first um so trademark law doesn't necessarily protect you as being the first to do something it protects if you are the first person to use that name with your goods um so if you start you know a clothing line and you call it bananas and it gets very famous you someone else can't open up a clothing line necessarily and call it bananas um that's kind of the apple example um and so the proof of activity of doing it first them saying that they were doing it first when you we
re doing it first that's more of a false advertising issue which is another area of law and i mean yes you can bring false advertising lawsuits but you would need to show that you were somehow harmed by their false advertisement um so they shouldn't be doing that either um but if you truly were the first then you could say that um and not put yourselves at risk of a false advertising claim but it is it is a different sphere of law and a trademark really wouldn't have helped you um um in that in
that instance if they were using the same name as you um it for the same thing that would be more of a trademark issue great thank you both um we have some more questions but um just to to um diversify a little bit i'm wondering you know what are three or three pet peeves for you know both john and from the cyber security front and then anita and carolyn from the copyright and legal front you know what are three pet peeves that you see um you know that you know you just see how they're out in th
e world and you're like oh like i wish they were doing this instead or um you know it's kind of a fun question we're all experts in our own different ways about certain things and so i'm wondering you know as it pertains to cyber security john like are there pet peeves that you see people like things that folks are doing way too common um that just hurt you and you know the same goes to you and nita and caroline in your work too yeah maybe maybe one kind of general or big pet peeve i see in in t
he security space is blaming people you know we're all trying to do our job you know be productive people and employees and oftentimes you'll see security advice that's oriented around like the huma you know it's a human problem like your users are stupid and they should not do unsafe things and oftentimes the advice is like don't click on weird links or don't open attachments um don't go to those websites and it's like that's what using computers is about it's about clicking on links and openin
g attachments and you know being on the internet um so in my mind like we can't create technological systems where users have to like walk on a tight rope or be a cyber security expert in order to operate them safely so technology needs to be kind of safe by by default and we need to stop blaming users for um for cyber security lapses and i think we're actually making some some progress there you know when you buy an iphone that's a more secure device that your five-year-old can use if they have
an iphone um then you know was accessible to the nsa like a decade ago and that's a that's a you know kind of massive transformation that we are starting to kind of thread the needle between security and usability and having devices that people love but that also respect our security and privacy yeah i mean because i i know what mine is um i um the increase in troll litigation um i think is something that bothers um a lot of lawyers and troll litigation is something um typically it's an entity
that's non-practicing um really all they do is sue in order to get revenue and we are definitely seeing and i've taken that um across all ip spheres especially patents it has really upticked but it's getting more with the copyright areas well not as much on the trademark side um but but copyright troll litigation just bothersome litigation is also up ticking and i think it's making it harder for creatives um or smaller companies to um to succeed because getting a lawsuit or a threat of a lawsuit
is very scary for a lot of organizations and it kind of deters your creativity and willingness to go out into the marketplace when you get something like that so um i think that's an emerging trend that is also a better for me um so it's hard um for smaller organizations to break through those are both great i think i probably am repeating myself but i would just say a pet peeve in terms of being a lawyer and and seeing people get hit with this is just not not asking permission to just make sur
e that if you're using somebody else's content you have permission to do it um and to not um you know this and this is really hard because especially online if you look online there's so much copyright violation that it becomes normalized right um but that doesn't mean that that you should do it so um always make sure you have permission to use others content those are all great and i'm also wondering um you know on in both of your different realms of expertise or areas of expertise as well um w
hat are anita sort of speaking to this a little bit but what are emerging trends that you think you know our audience should know about or also just maybe or something that like doesn't necessarily pertain to our audience but like still is like this is emergent and maybe there is a way that it will start to take shape where you know it will you know kind of very future thinking what are what are those emergence trends what are those questions that you all are considering um anita it's you know t
roll litigation which i think you know is a very interesting one for sure um john and carolyn wondering you know what your thoughts are as well i think maybe beyond just security it's um you know we many of us many organizations have gone to work from home transition due to covid which has not been not been easy and there's actually increased kind of cyber security risk by doing that you know our employees and members of our organizations are just reaching into their drawer and pulling out like
whatever windows xp laptop they they have in order to get their job done um but there's also i think there's there's opportunity in that too in that you know a lot of um organizations nonprofits might operate with a a focused kind of local or geographic mission but there might be new opportunities that are new remote collaborations new opportunities to think about a global impact so i think um thinking about what a global audience looks like from your your organization is is uh interesting tryin
g to have a growth mindset in the midst of the pandemic um maybe the the other thing i think for how technology intersects with the arts and culture is some of those new digital experiences um i'm here i'm seeing a lot of folks talking about you know uh exhibitions through virtual reality or augmented reality um adam kind of touched on non-fungible tokens or nfts like having virtual nft galleries where people can still browse and appreciate um art in a way that's you know from their house or fro
m the living room it sounds very weird and there are some very weird aspects to nfts but um it's also interesting and you know kind of on the bleeding edge um emerging trends and copyright law i mean i think anita anita talked about the copyright small claims court i think that's the the general emerging trend of having it an alternative to dispute resolution that is not uh as expensive and time consuming is litigation um i think there was a lot you know there's a long history behind that coming
to fruition and i think that could be really beneficial for you know artists in particular because uh it's one thing to know that your art is being or your copyrighted work is being infringed just another thing to have the wherewithal and the and the funds frankly to file a copyright infringement lawsuit so i think the ability to democratize that a little bit more and have a more efficient way of doing it hopefully with this new small claims court um will end up being really helpful awesome so
um yeah i really appreciate all of all of um your insights and also yeah just the future thinking forward thinking um look out for this kind of tips as well too i mean my brain is bouncing around i've got like a pinball of ideas but that said we are at the end of our program here i'm going to invite yen to do a share of her um time lapse is the word i keep forgetting the word today time lapse video of what she's what she's recorded um there were also a few more questions in the chat um we'll mak
e sure to get those down and make sure that you get some answers um from our uh panelists and presenters um as follow-up to this program um but yeah thank you everybody for being here again today we'll be showing out this recording a huge um thank you to anita and carolyn for joining us and sharing their legal insights and expertise and john for his um cyber secure expertise as well and you know thinking about people first technology too it's huge and and big thank you to yen also for making thi
s creative and people first and capturing um you know what we learned i learned a lot but also we heard and um yeah just a big thank you to everybody for being here too we'll be sure to share these um these videos and um images out as well too um which are great and also if you if you missed any of our previous programs um you can go to culturesource.org calendar and see the recordings um and feel free to join me for our hack session on um not for profits does not mean not a target which is star
ting literally right now um and i have to go join the other zoom call and host that as well gotta build in some some space next time but you know we like the rush it's good um thanks again everyone and take care thanks so much
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