“Hire a lawyer for an hour and talk about: What risks are we taking? What things should we be avoiding? How can we set ourselves up to not have to call me down the line because things have gone sideways. I will tell you, in the 10-plus years I’ve been a lawyer, it has always been easier and cheaper to prevent problems than to fix them.”
—Ruth Carter
In this #ContentChat recap, Erika Heald is joined by Ruth Carter, a licensed attorney whose practice focuses on business intellectual property and internet law, to discuss the top legal considerations facing marketers in Fall 2024, including an overview of the Corporate Transparency Act and how to stay compliant.
An important disclaimer: Everything in this conversation should be construed as legal information, not legal advice. If you appreciate the information Ruth shared, please consider donating to the Arizona Basset Hound Rescue.
Watch the entire conversation on YouTube or read through the highlights below.
Navigating Content Marketing’s Legal Landscape in 2024
Laws often lag behind technology innovations, and the U.S. lacks a nationwide privacy law (unlike other countries).
“[Content marketers] live in a world where things are going at rocket speed, but the law moves slower than molasses. We’re always trying to figure out how old laws apply to new technology, and privacy has been a hot topic for years. It started with GDPR and some other countries passing privacy laws. Somehow, the U.S. still doesn’t have one. But many states have passed privacy laws.”—Ruth Carter
Understand what rights you are giving away by using AI tools. Read the terms of service or employ legal counsel who can interpret the takeaways for you.
“When it comes to deciding what you’re going to use AI for, you need to know what you’re giving up by using it. I haven’t read the ChatGPT terms of service in a while, but I did read it before, and it used to say we can use anything that you input to our AI machine, and anything that comes out of our AI machine we can use for any purpose, and we may give the same output to multiple people. So you have to be thoughtful about what you want to give permission to the AI company to use, and what risk you take by allowing it to manipulate your data; could you be inadvertently putting clients’ confidential information out into the ether?”—Ruth Carter
Establish clear guidelines with clients at the start of every engagement about how AI will be used and what information must remain confidential.
“I usually tell people who are content marketers [or] any type of marketing agency, when you’re taking on a project, and you’re having that first meeting with your team about what are we here to create and who’s going to do what, have that conversation about what are we going to use AI to create, if anything, and what information needs to stay confidential, and for how long.”—Ruth Carter
Consider reviewing your AI policy or creating one to safeguard your team’s use of AI.
“I have a client who I just helped write for their website an AI policy that details both how their employees use AI, but importantly, because they are a huge professional development and training company, putting out there how you can’t take their copyright, their intellectual property, and put it into the AI machine. Because if you do, you will be violating the licenses that you have purchased from them for using the content.”—Erika Heald
“Probably every company should have an AI policy. There should be that dialog between employees and employers about what AIs they are allowed to use and for what purposes.”—Ruth Carter
Test your AI tools with public data or fake data to learn the tool’s capabilities, limitations, and risks.
“Is there a way to test drive an AI without using real client data? So like you have a dummy client, a made-up company that you can use, and it doesn’t matter if the AI machine has a copy of it, because it’s either fake or you got it from a public source.”—Ruth Carter
Privacy Concerns for Content Marketers: Staying Compliant with Evolving Regulations
Establish agreements with clients that help limit your legal risks. As a writer, you can add these safeguards to your creative briefs.
“When you are given personal information from your client, it should include instructions as to what you should be doing with it, including with AI, so that way you are, to a degree, putting the onus on your client to have that level of protection of these are your do’s and don’ts. That doesn’t take your responsibility completely away. You still have to apply common sense reasonableness.”—Ruth Carter
“Put it on them, like you are entrusting us and you have to attest that all this information was legally obtained, and in the event that we are accused of wrongdoing because of what you told us to do with it, you are responsible and will reimburse us for our attorney’s fees and any damages assessed against us because we did what you asked us to do.”—Ruth Carter
Add a force majeure or no guarantees clause to your contract.
“Because a lot of what we do involves software and algorithms that we don’t control, I tell people, if you don’t have a good force majeure provision in your contract, you need to add that in. [It’s] also known as the no guarantees clause.”—Ruth Carter
“People will write it as we’re not responsible for things outside of our control, including, but not limited to, fire, flood, strike, government shutdowns, zombie apocalypse, acts of God, acts by other deities, hangovers, hang nails, whatever.”—Ruth Carter
The Corporate Transparency Act: What Small Businesses Need to Know Before the Deadline
Ruth gives the high-level takeaways on the Corporate Transparency Act below. You can learn more in this detailed blog post.
“This a newish law that no one’s talking about, but it impacts like 33 million small businesses in the US. The purpose of this law is to prevent people from hiding behind shell companies to do bad things. So if your company has a business entity that has to be filed with your state—like a corporation, LLC, a partnership; you have to file something with your state to exist—and you have 19 full-time employees or less, you have to file your beneficial ownership information report with the federal government by the end of the year.”—Ruth Carter
“What is a beneficial owner? That is not a word that existed before this law. It’s the people who have substantial control over the company or own 25% or more. That could be owners. That’s probably anybody whose title begins with Chief: Chief Financial Officer, Chief Operations Officer, Chief Happiness Officer, all those people. Probably your in-house counsel, if you have one. It could even be somebody who’s not employed or officially an owner, but they have substantial control because they’re the puppeteer controlling the marionettes.”—Ruth Carter
“You have to tell the government their legal name, where they live, and you have to provide a copy of either their unexpired driver’s license or passport or other state ID.”—Ruth Carter
“You also have to tell them where your company operates from. So if you’re somebody who your official company address is a box at a UPS Store, but your real operations is off your dining room table, you’ve you got to say the company’s address is your home address.”—Ruth Carter
Lessons from an Attorney: Key Takeaways for Safer, Smarter Content Marketing
Listen to the full recording for more insights from Ruth, including:
- Whether it’s legal to automatically add conference attendees to your email list and the better approach to find quality contacts (17:57)
- How to avoid copyright infringement when creating content or sourcing images (37:52)
- Why AI generated content detection software isn’t as accurate as you may think (41:53)
- Why AI tools are never free (45:25)
- Two things marketers can do today to decrease their likelihood of encountering legal trouble (52:17)
