Podcasting and Audio Rights Toolkit: Music, Guests, Marks, and Distribution

By Casey Scott McKay · 2025-03-10

A podcast is a download and an on-demand stream, which engages the reproduction, distribution, and public performance rights at once, and none of the compulsory licences that make radio and streaming work applies to it. This toolkit collects what follows. It works through the two individually negotiated permissions every piece of commercial music requires, the production library terms that catch shows out when they add video and clips, and the ownership of a theme commissioned without paperwork. It then addresses guests, clips, and archival audio, the show name that almost nobody clears, and the RSS feed that is the only irreplaceable asset in the enterprise. It closes on advertising disclosure, which generates more regulatory contact than every copyright issue combined, and on the deal terms that decide whether a show survives its network relationship.

IP and Technology > Copyright | Toolkit | Published 10 March 2025 - Updated 25 March 2026 | Casey Scott McKay - marksy.us

Summary. A podcast is a download and an on-demand stream, engaging the reproduction, distribution, and public performance rights at once, and none of the compulsory licences that make radio and streaming work applies to it. This toolkit works through the two individually negotiated permissions every piece of commercial music requires, the production library terms that catch shows out, and the ownership of a theme commissioned without paperwork. It addresses guests, clips, and archival audio, the show name almost nobody clears, and the RSS feed that is the only irreplaceable asset — and closes on advertising disclosure and the deal terms that decide whether a show survives its network relationship.

Keywords: podcast rights toolkit · music licensing for podcasts · sync and master use · production library terms · guest releases · right of publicity · show name clearance · RSS feed ownership · network agreements · group copyright registration · FTC endorsement disclosure · clip and fair use review · archival audio · synthetic voice · errors and omissions insurance

Start Here

Radio stations play music without negotiating with anyone. Streaming services play tens of millions of tracks under blanket arrangements. A podcast, which feels like radio and behaves like streaming, has neither.

The reason is in the statute. 17 U.S.C. § 106 gives the copyright owner control of reproduction, distribution, derivative works, public performance, and public display, with sound recordings carrying a public performance right only for digital audio transmissions.

A podcast makes a copy. The episode file contains the music; the file is reproduced on every server it passes through and distributed to every listener who downloads it. That is reproduction and distribution, not merely performance, and the compulsory mechanical licence in 17 U.S.C. § 115 does not reach it.

So a podcast needs two negotiated permissions for every piece of music — a synchronisation-style licence from the publisher for the composition and a master use licence from the recording owner under 17 U.S.C. § 114. Neither is compulsory, either can be refused, and silence from a label is a refusal in practice.

Which is why podcast music is almost always production library music, commissioned original music, or nothing.

But music is not what actually goes wrong. The risks that materialise are a guest who wants an episode removed, a name that collides at episode three hundred, a feed that turns out to belong to a producer, an undisclosed sponsorship, and an archive that cannot be sold because nobody kept the paper.

Every one of those is administrative, cheap to prevent contemporaneously, and expensive or impossible to fix afterwards — which is the organising insight of this toolkit.

Music

Adopt a production library or commission original music, and read the licence for six things.

Media. Podcast only, or podcast plus video, plus social clips, plus paid promotion. Most shows now publish across all four and most library licences default to fewer.

Territory. Worldwide or restricted.

Term. Perpetual for content published during the licence, or expiring — and if expiring, what happens to the back catalogue.

Subscription survival. Whether the licence for content published during a subscription survives cancellation. A show scored under a lapsed subscription that did not survive has an infringing archive, and this is among the most common defects found in diligence.

Performing rights registration of the library tracks, and what that means for platforms that report usage.

And the record. Track identifier and licence reference per episode, because platform disputes and diligence are both resolved on documents rather than on recollection.

Commissioned music is the other route, and it needs paper. 17 U.S.C. § 101 defines work made for hire narrowly for commissioned works, and a musical composition for a podcast does not obviously fit the enumerated categories — so the reliable route is an express assignment of copyright in both the composition and the master, in the signed writing 17 U.S.C. § 204 requires.

Reserve to the composer a credit, the right to perform live, the right to include the work on a personal release, and any agreed re-use fee. It costs nothing and it makes the deal.

Because the default is stark. A theme commissioned from a friend for a fee with nothing signed belongs to the friend — in both the composition and the recording — and it is the first thing a buyer asks about.

People in the Recording

A guest release is a page long and most shows do not use one. For an ordinary conversational interview that is usually fine; for four situations it is not.

Substantial editing that could be characterised as distorting what the guest said. Sensitive material — a personal account, a health disclosure, an allegation about a third party. Re-use beyond the episode in a book, a live show, a compilation, a video adaptation, or a clip campaign. And a show commercially significant enough to be worth suing.

What the release covers. Consent to record; a grant of rights in the guest's contribution sufficient for the show's uses, in all media, worldwide, in perpetuity; consent to use of name, likeness, voice, and biography in the episode and its promotion; a right of publicity release, which is separate from copyright and governed by state law; and an acknowledgement that editorial control rests with the producer with no approval or withdrawal right.

Expect the removal request, because they happen. A show with a release can choose; a show without one is negotiating from nothing — and choosing to remove an episode on the merits is still frequently the right answer.

Three special cases. A guest who reads prepared remarks or performs a work is contributing a separate copyrighted work with separate rights. A musician performing live in studio engages 17 U.S.C. § 1101, which prohibits fixing the sounds of a live musical performance without consent. And a minor requires a parent or guardian signature.

And defamation is the real risk in interview shows. The producer publishes what the guest says, republication is publication, and 47 U.S.C. § 230 protects the platform hosting the show rather than the producer who solicited, recorded, edited, and published the statement.

Clips, Archival Audio, and Fair Use

Sort every proposed clip into one of three categories.

Commentary. The show discusses the material and plays a portion to support the discussion — the strongest position under 17 U.S.C. § 107, squarely within criticism and comment, provided no more is used than the point requires.

Parody. Comment on the original itself, protected under Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc., 510 U.S. 569 (1994), and distinguishable from satire, which uses the work to comment on something else and needs its own justification.

Decoration. Music under a monologue, a film line for a laugh, archival audio for atmosphere — use of the work for its own expressive value, which after Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. v. Goldsmith, 598 U.S. 508 (2023), has no further purpose to weigh in its favour. Licence it or cut it.

Record the analysis: category, source, duration, purpose, and decision-maker. A contemporaneous note is evidence of good faith and materially affects a willfulness argument.

There is no duration rule. No seven-second rule, no percentage safe harbour, and a three-second sample that is the recognisable hook can be more exposed than a minute of a spoken lecture used for commentary. The belief that a length threshold exists causes most unlicensed use in this medium.

Sampling carries a circuit split. Bridgeport Music, Inc. v. Dimension Films, 410 F.3d 792 (6th Cir. 2005), applies no de minimis exception to sound recordings; VMG Salsoul, LLC v. Ciccone, 824 F.3d 871 (9th Cir. 2016), does — and a nationally distributed show is exposed to whichever rule the plaintiff's forum applies.

Archival audio requires an individual position. Pre-1972 sound recordings fall under 17 U.S.C. § 1401; institutional holdings frequently carry deposit terms distinct from copyright; and a recording may involve separate rights in the underlying work, the fixation, and the performance.

The Name and the Feed

Podcast names are almost never cleared, and the collision rate is high because the naming conventions are conventional.

Search widely, including the podcast directories themselves, which is where the collisions actually are and where no trademark search will find them.

Assess under 15 U.S.C. § 1052(d), and file in Class 41 for the entertainment services of providing an ongoing audio series, Class 9 for downloadable recordings, and the goods classes for any merchandise.

Address the single-work refusal. A title of a single creative work does not function as a mark; a series does — so present the show as ongoing with a specimen identifying the series rather than one episode.

Clear before launch, not before growth. A rebrand at episode three hundred costs search position, back-catalogue association, and a substantial part of the audience; the clearance costs an afternoon.

And the feed is the actual asset. Everything else in a podcast can be replaced — hosts change, artwork changes, the name can, painfully, change. The RSS feed cannot, because every directory, app, and subscriber points at it.

Control means three things: ownership of the domain the feed sits on, control of the hosting account, and the technical ability to redirect the feed to a new host.

Shows routinely have none of them, and when the relationship ends the audience stays with the producer.

Use your own domain from episode one. A feed on an owned domain can be redirected to any host and subscribers follow; a feed on a hosting provider's domain cannot. It is the only genuinely irreversible decision in the entire enterprise and it costs ten dollars.

Hold the hosting account in the owning entity, with credentials known to more than one person, and hold the masters — edited episodes, raw recordings, stems, and artwork — in storage the show controls.

Registration and Enforcement

Register the episodes. Copyright registration is a precondition to suit under 17 U.S.C. § 411, and Fourth Estate Public Benefit Corp. v. Wall-Street.com, LLC, 586 U.S. 296 (2019), requires that the Office have acted before an action may be brought.

Timing decides value. 17 U.S.C. § 412 conditions statutory damages and attorney fees on registration before infringement or within three months of first publication — and outside that window a claim against an unauthorised re-publisher is worth actual damages that are difficult to prove and rarely worth pursuing.

Use a group registration option appropriate to the publication pattern, quarterly, rather than filing episode by episode or not at all — and register the artwork and the theme separately, since they are separately exploited and separately infringed.

Enforcement in practice is takedown. 17 U.S.C. § 512 notices resolve unauthorised re-uploads and feed scraping, and platform brand registry processes reach clip accounts trading on the show's name and artwork faster than any copyright claim.

Send accurate notices, because section 512(f) creates liability for knowing material misrepresentation and because platforms deprioritise senders with poor accuracy records.

Consider the small-claims route for disputes within its damages cap, which fits the scale of most podcast claims considerably better than federal litigation.

And prepare for the reverse. When a music rights holder's automated system flags an episode, the per-episode licence record is the response — and a counter-notice under section 512(g) exposes the sender to jurisdiction, so it should be filed on evidence rather than on confidence.

Advertising

This produces more regulatory contact than every copyright issue combined.

Host-read advertisements are endorsements under the Endorsement Guides at 16 C.F.R. Part 255, enforced under 15 U.S.C. § 45.

Disclosure must be spoken, clear, and before the endorsement. A line in the episode description does not cure an undisclosed spoken read, and a disclosure after the claim is not before it.

The endorsement must reflect honest opinion and, where implied, actual experience. A host saying "I use this every day" is making a representation of fact.

Claims require substantiation, and the obligation reaches the host regardless of who wrote the copy — with health, earnings, and comparative performance claims the recurring problems.

Read the insertion order, resisting indemnities running from the producer to the advertiser for claims the advertiser drafted, and identify the regulated categories — supplements, financial services, alcohol, cannabis, gambling — whose rules arrive through the advertiser and are frequently not explained.

Write a standing disclosure script and use it rather than relying on the host to phrase it each time.

And keep the recording of what was actually said, because the enforcement question is the read rather than the script.

Deals

Four structures recur, and in all of them the same three terms decide the outcome.

The advertising representation deal. A sales house sells the inventory for a commission; ownership stays with the producer. Watch exclusivity, term, minimum guarantees, and whether the sales house can bind the show to advertisers or categories it would refuse.

The network deal. Production, distribution, promotion, and sales for a share. Watch ownership of the mark, control of the feed, ownership of the archive, and the exit terms — because hosts who leave networks without those terms leave the show behind, and it happens routinely.

The platform exclusive. A payment for exclusivity, the feed moves behind the platform, and the independent audience effectively ends. Ask what reverts at the end of the term, in what condition, and with what subscriber base.

The commissioned show. The commissioner owns the work and engages the host as talent — a services arrangement to be documented as one, with credit, re-use fees, and any restriction on competing activity stated expressly.

The three terms: who owns the mark; who controls the feed and the domain; who holds the masters, the raw recordings, and the archive.

Negotiate those before the revenue split. Producers argue percentages for weeks and accept the rights terms as drafted, which is exactly backwards — the split governs a few years of income and the rights terms govern whether there is a show afterwards.

And read the exit provisions before the term provisions.

The Second Life of an Episode

Every audio show is now also a video show and a clip operation, and the licences frequently stop at audio.

Check the music licence media terms against video posting, vertical social clips, and paid promotion.

Check the guest release covers video and promotional clips, not only the audio episode.

Re-run the clip analysis for the video version, because posting to a video platform exposes the show to automated content matching that audio distribution does not.

Own the transcripts. They are derivative works of the episode, they are the show's most valuable search asset, and their ownership follows the episode.

Read the terms of every automated transcription and editing service before uploading an archive, because some reserve rights to use submitted audio for model training — and interviews recorded under confidentiality, or with releases predating any such use, should not go to those services.

Address synthetic voice expressly in host and performer agreements: scope, duration, approval over content, and revocability. A perpetual, irrevocable grant of a voice model should be resisted, and it appears in more agreements than it should.

Note the three distinct synthetic voice questions. Using a consenting person's voice model, which is contractual. Imitating an identifiable person without consent, which raises right of publicity exposure and a false endorsement theory under 15 U.S.C. § 1125(a), with several states having enacted specific digital replica provisions. And training on recorded audio, which is the upload question rather than the output question.

And extend the trademark registration to merchandise classes before a third party files for them.

Narrative and Documentary Series

A reported narrative series is closer to documentary film production than to a conversational show, and the clearance discipline reflects that.

Archival audio is the central workload, with each item requiring an individual rights position as set out above.

Interview releases must anticipate the finished programme, including the possibility that it portrays the subject unfavourably — and a release obtained during production is the only one that will be obtained at all.

Recreated audio and voice performance raise script authorship, performer rights, and synthetic voice consent.

Music is heavier, because narrative series score continuously and a licence covering a few cues per episode will not cover it.

Build the clearance file as you go, episode by episode, in a form a distributor's counsel can read.

And assess errors and omissions insurance early, because it is standard in documentary production, increasingly requested in audio, and unobtainable without that file.

Budget for it as a line item comparable to editing, because productions that treat clearance as an afterthought discover the cost at the point of distribution, when the options are worst.

The Starting-Out Programme

Buy the domain and put the feed on it. Ten dollars, five minutes, and the highest-value decision available.

Clear the name and file it in Class 41 as a series.

Sign the composer — one page, assignment of composition and master, credit and live performance rights reserved.

Sign the editor, producer, artist, and co-host. The co-host is the hardest and most commonly omitted: absent an agreement the episodes are a joint work under 17 U.S.C. § 101, each owner may licence non-exclusively subject to accounting, and the separation becomes a simultaneous dispute over the name, the feed, and the catalogue. Have that conversation on day one when nobody minds.

Adopt one music source and stay inside it, with terms covering podcast, video, and social clips, worldwide and in perpetuity.

Adopt a guest release and use it whenever a trigger applies.

Register episodes quarterly using a group option, inside the three-month window.

Write the disclosure script, speak it before the read, and keep the recordings.

Keep a per-episode clearance file: music licence reference, guest release, clip analysis, and the sponsor's approved copy.

A day of set-up and ten minutes an episode, and it is the difference between a show with an archive worth something and a show with several hundred audio files it cannot license, sell, or insure.

Remediating an Existing Show

Most shows arrive at a lawyer at the point of a deal, when a buyer asks for a chain of title that does not exist. Work in this order.

Feed and name first, because they are fixable. Move the feed to an owned domain; clear and file the name; and if it cannot be cleared, decide the rebrand now rather than at episode six hundred.

Then the theme. A retrospective assignment from the composer is usually obtainable and cheap, and it is the first diligence question.

Then the contractors, with a short confirmatory assignment covering past work, which is standard and rarely refused.

Then the music. Reconstruct usage from the production records, match against the licences that exist, and triage the unsupported episodes into re-scoring, muting, or removal. Re-scoring an old episode is cheaper than most producers expect.

Then the guests, triaged by exposure: sensitive material, promotional use, and episodes the buyer intends to exploit.

Register the back catalogue, accepting that section 412 remedies are gone for past infringements while registration remains the precondition to suit.

And produce an honest schedule — clean, contingent, unsupported — rather than an assurance. A buyer given a schedule discounts a defined number of episodes; a buyer given an assurance that fails renegotiates the entire deal.

Scale, and a Closing Note

A hobby show with fifty listeners needs the domain and nothing else, and advising such a producer to obtain releases and register quarterly is advice they will correctly ignore.

The threshold is money or reach: sponsorship, a network conversation, merchandise, or an audience large enough to attract attention.

Two items apply regardless. The domain, because it cannot be retrofitted without losing subscribers. And the name search, because a collision found at episode three hundred costs the audience.

Everything else can wait until the show is worth protecting, and most of it takes an afternoon on the day that becomes true.

And the recurring pattern in this medium is worth stating plainly. Producers ask about music. What actually goes wrong is a guest who wants an episode removed, a name that collides, a feed that belongs to a producer, an undisclosed sponsorship, and an archive nobody papered.

Podcasting inherited the informality of blogging and the rights complexity of broadcasting, and the mismatch is the whole of the subject. A show begins as two people talking into microphones, with no agreements, borrowed music, a name nobody searched, and a feed on someone else's account — every choice rational at the time and expensive later.

Then the show works, and every informality becomes a diligence item. The value of a podcast is its audience and its archive, and the archive is only worth something if the rights in it are clean.

The remedy is four documents and a habit: an owned domain, a cleared and filed name, one-page assignments from everyone who contributes, and a per-episode clearance record that takes ten minutes.

Merchandise, Live Shows, and Adaptation

A successful show sells things, and each new line reaches beyond the original clearances.

Merchandise engages trademark classes the Class 41 filing does not cover, so extend the registration to the goods actually sold before a third party files for them — and check that the cover artist's assignment covers goods rather than only the feed image, because the original commission almost never did.

Live shows are public performances of whatever is performed, and a live recording released as an episode brings the venue's terms, the guests' releases, and any music performed into the analysis again.

Books and adaptations depend on ownership of the underlying material, which means the guest releases, the contractor assignments, and the archive rights all have to be clean before the option is negotiated rather than after.

Membership and paywalled feeds raise a distribution question and a contract question: terms of service, refund policy, and — for shows using a third-party membership platform — who owns the subscriber relationship if the show leaves.

Sponsored series and branded content engage the Endorsement Guides more heavily than spot advertising, because the whole programme is sponsored and the disclosure has to be proportionate.

And international distribution brings territorial licence limits into focus, which is where a music licence restricted to one territory becomes a problem — and where dubbing and subtitling raise the derivative work and performer questions covered in the localisation context.

Common Failure Patterns

The unowned feed. The producer relationship ends and the audience goes with the producer. Catastrophic, common, and prevented by a domain purchase at episode one.

The unassigned theme. The composer owns the show's most recognisable asset, and discovers it at the point of a network deal.

The co-host with no agreement. A joint work, each owner able to licence non-exclusively, and a separation that becomes a negotiation over the name, the feed, and the archive at once.

The lapsed subscription. Music licensed under a library subscription that did not survive cancellation, and an archive of episodes now unsupported.

The universal release nobody uses. A process requiring a signed form from every guest, ignored within a month, providing worse protection than a targeted process actually followed.

The clip that was "only four seconds." No duration rule exists, and the belief that one does produces most unlicensed use.

The unregistered catalogue. Several hundred episodes, no registrations, and a claim against a commercial re-publisher worth actual damages nobody can prove.

The undisclosed read. A host endorsement with the disclosure in the show notes, which is not a disclosure at all in an audio medium.

And the deal negotiated on the split, with ownership of the mark and the feed accepted as drafted, and a show that turns out to belong to somebody else.

Questions Producers Ask

"Can I use ten seconds of a song?" No, not without both licences. There is no duration threshold and nothing in 17 U.S.C. § 107 turns on length alone.

"What if I credit the artist?" Attribution is not a licence, and it makes the use easier to find.

"The label never responds." That is a refusal in practice. Use library music or commission.

"Do I need a release for every guest?" No. Use the four triggers, and use one whenever any applies.

"A guest wants their episode taken down." With a release that is your decision; without one it is a negotiation. Either way, consider whether removal is right on the merits — sometimes it plainly is.

"Can I take the show if I leave the network?" Depends entirely on who owns the mark and controls the feed, which is why those terms matter more than the split.

"Should I incorporate?" Usually yes once there is revenue, and the entity should own the domain, the hosting account, the mark, and the assignments.

"Someone is re-uploading my episodes." Send a compliant notice under 17 U.S.C. § 512, and use the trademark as well where the account trades on the show's name and artwork.

"How much does all this cost?" A filing fee, a domain, a music subscription, and a few hours of drafting, plus ten minutes an episode — against the cost of a rebrand, a lost feed, or an unsellable archive, which is not a close question.

A Working Calendar

Before episode one. Domain purchased and feed published on it. Name searched and filed in Class 41. Composer, artist, and co-host signed. Music source chosen and its media terms read. Guest release template and trigger criteria adopted. Standing disclosure script written.

Weekly, per episode. Record the music tracks and licence reference; the guest release where triggered; the clip category and analysis where any clip was used; and the sponsor copy as approved and as read.

Quarterly. File the group registration inside the three-month window. Reconcile music licence usage. Review any new distribution surface — video, clips, membership, international — against the existing licences.

Annually. Confirm trademark status and renewal dates. Review any network or representation agreement against the mark, feed, and masters terms. Audit archive storage and credentials. Refresh the guest release template against any new re-use the show has begun.

On any deal. Settle the mark, the feed, and the masters before the split, and read the exit provisions before the term provisions.

On any incident. Compliant notice under 17 U.S.C. § 512 for re-uploads; the per-episode licence record for any content match; and the recording of the read for any advertising question.

Nothing on that calendar takes more than an afternoon, and together they convert a body of audio files into an asset — which is the entire point of the exercise and the thing most shows discover only when somebody offers to buy them.

Documents to Keep

A clearance search and filing record for the show name, with the Class 41 application and any goods classes.

Domain and hosting account records in the owning entity's name, with credentials held by more than one person.

Signed assignments from the composer, artist, editor, producer, and every co-host.

A co-host or founder agreement covering ownership of the show, the mark, the feed, and the archive, and what happens on separation.

A music licence file with the library terms, the media and territory scope, the survival position, and a per-episode record of tracks used.

A guest release template, the trigger criteria, and the signed releases themselves.

A clip log: source, duration, category, purpose, and decision-maker.

A registration calendar with quarterly group filings and the deposit copies retained.

An advertising file: insertion orders, approved copy, the standing disclosure script, and the recordings of the reads.

A deal file with the mark, feed, and masters terms flagged in every agreement.

And a per-episode clearance record tying it together.

Eleven items, ten minutes an episode, and the whole of the difference between an archive worth selling and a folder of audio files.

Working With Producers

Producers are not obstructive; they are busy, and the compliance that survives is the compliance that fits inside a production week.

Give them a one-page card. Two music permissions, four release triggers, three clip categories, no duration rule, disclosure spoken before the read. That card covers ninety percent of what arises.

Make the clearance record part of the episode template, so it is completed alongside the show notes rather than as a separate task nobody owns.

Explain the feed in commercial terms. A producer who understands that the domain is the audience will buy it that afternoon; one told it is a legal formality will not.

Explain the name in the same terms. Search position, back catalogue, and audience are what a rebrand costs, and that is the language the decision is actually made in.

Handle the co-host conversation early and lightly, because it is easy on day one and impossible on the day it matters.

And when something has gone wrong, triage rather than lecture. Feed, name, theme, contractors, music, guests — in that order, with an honest schedule at the end. Producers respond well to a sequence and badly to a list of everything that should have been done differently, which is worth remembering in a medium where most shows arrive with all of it undone.

One last observation about this medium. The economics rest entirely on owning the relationship with the listener, and the industry's characteristic failure is that shows do not own the address through which that relationship runs. Everything else in this toolkit is ordinary rights work applied to a new format; the feed is the point where the format itself creates a risk nothing in copyright or trademark law addresses, and where a ten-dollar decision in week one determines whether a business exists in year five.

Which is why this toolkit leads with music and ends with the feed. Producers arrive asking about the first and are almost never asked about the second — and a practitioner who reverses that order in the first conversation has already delivered most of the value available here.

The rest is documentation, and documentation is easy once somebody has decided it matters.

Deciding it matters, early, is the part a practitioner is actually there for.

Everything after that is a matter of habit, and habits are cheap when they are set up on the first day rather than reconstructed on the last.

A Suggested Reading Path

Start with the doctrine in Everything You Hear.

Then the practice in Producing a Podcast or Audio Series.

Then the audit in the podcast and audio production checklist.

For fair use, Fair Use After Warhol, the fair use risk assessment checklist, and the Fair Use and Permissions Toolkit.

For ownership, Who Owns the Work?, Transfers, Licenses, and Termination Rights, and the copyright ownership and chain of title checklist.

For registration, What Copyright Registration Actually Buys You and Registering a Copyright.

For advertising, Endorsements, Influencers, and the Law of Paid Praise and Building an Influencer and Endorsement Compliance Program.

For enforcement, Sending and Fighting a DMCA Takedown and the Copyright Enforcement Toolkit.

For name clearance, the Trademark Clearance and Brand Selection Toolkit.

And for voice and likeness, the Right of Publicity and Personal Brand Toolkit and the Translation, Localisation, and Adaptation Rights Toolkit for dubbed and localised audio.

Primary Authorities

| Authority | Proposition | |---|---| | 17 U.S.C. § 106 | Exclusive rights; digital performance | | 17 U.S.C. § 114 | Sound recording rights | | 17 U.S.C. § 115 | Mechanical compulsory licence; does not reach podcasts | | 17 U.S.C. § 107 | Fair use | | 17 U.S.C. § 101 | Work made for hire; joint works | | 17 U.S.C. § 201 | Initial ownership | | 17 U.S.C. § 204 | Transfers in a signed writing | | 17 U.S.C. § 411 | Registration precondition to suit | | 17 U.S.C. § 412 | Statutory damages and fees | | 17 U.S.C. § 512 | Notice and takedown; misrepresentation | | 17 U.S.C. § 1101 | Anti-bootlegging | | 17 U.S.C. § 1401 | Pre-1972 sound recordings | | 47 U.S.C. § 230 | Platform immunity; not the producer | | 15 U.S.C. § 1052(d) | Likelihood of confusion | | 15 U.S.C. § 1051 | Application requirements | | 15 U.S.C. § 1125(a) | False endorsement; synthetic voice | | 16 C.F.R. Part 255 | Endorsement Guides | | 15 U.S.C. § 45 | Unfair or deceptive acts | | Andy Warhol Found. for the Visual Arts v. Goldsmith | Purpose and character | | Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music | Parody versus satire | | Bridgeport Music v. Dimension Films | No de minimis for recordings | | VMG Salsoul v. Ciccone | De minimis applies | | Cmty. for Creative Non-Violence v. Reid | Employee versus contractor | | Fourth Estate Pub. Benefit Corp. v. Wall-Street.com | Office must have acted | | Feist Publications v. Rural Telephone Service | Originality | | Music Modernization Act blanket licence | Confirms podcasts sit outside | | Digital replica and voice statutes | Synthetic voice consent regimes |

Forms and Templates

The Assignment Agreement Template is the workhorse of this toolkit and should be used for the composer, the cover artist, the editor, the producer, the sound designer, and — most importantly — the co-host, combining a work made for hire designation with an express assignment so that a failure of the first does not leave the show with nothing. The License Agreement Template supplies the structure for network, representation, platform exclusive, and commissioned arrangements, where the operative provisions are ownership of the mark, control of the feed and the domain, possession of the masters and the archive, and the exit terms. The Portfolio Inventory Template adapts into the per-episode clearance record this toolkit treats as the essential habit: music tracks and licence references, guest releases where triggered, clip categories and analyses, and sponsor copy as approved and as read. Beyond those, keep the domain and hosting account records in the owning entity, a guest release template with its trigger criteria, a registration calendar with retained deposits, and a standing sponsorship disclosure script.

Related Toolkits and Checklists

The Fair Use and Permissions Toolkit carries the clip analysis in full. The Copyright Enforcement Toolkit covers takedown practice against re-uploads and feed scraping. The Right of Publicity and Personal Brand Toolkit covers guest likeness and synthetic voice. The Trademark Clearance and Brand Selection Toolkit covers the show name, and the Small Claims Copyright Enforcement Toolkit covers disputes at the scale most podcast claims occupy.