Legal Assistance for web monetization innovators — Grant Report #2 - Final Report

New Media Rights — Fri, 27 Aug 2021 00:39:34 +0000

Project Update

We connected with and advised quite a few projects that use alternative forms of web monetization. The web monetization community has been critical to connecting folks to our legal services. We worked on 17 different matters during the grant period.

Progress on objectives

Our proposal was to serve as a support to creatives and innovators experimenting with web monetization, and so far, we have steadily been accomplishing that. We expected to put in at least 200 hours of legal services, and we have met and exceeded our 200 hours, with over 350 hours of legal services provided. Clients have ranged from startup web services to filmmakers and other creatives. These individuals and organizations need exactly the kind of intellectual property, contract drafting, and privacy legal work that is our specialty. Some came directly through the Grant for the Web community, others came to us directly through our website.

Key activities

Our activities have ranged from brief 1-3 hour consultations, to extensive service engagements that last for months.

Communications and marketing

We made posts on the web monetization community detailing the services we provide and how to request the services. For example,

https://community.webmonetization.org/pslawmi/new-media-rights-free-legal-consultations-2l2f

https://community.webmonetization.org/newmediarights/free-legal-consultations-with-new-media-rights-2k2h

Due to attorney confidentiality, we aren’t able to share details of specific representations online, but we have been hearing from a number of grantees and applicants that need a variety of legal services for their web monetization related project.

What’s next?

We learned alot about the needs of projects that us new types of web monetization. There is certainly a demand for legal services in this community and we’re excited to support alternative web monetization models. We want to make ourselves available to the community for legal services, and will be requesting additional support to continue our legal work with web monetization projects in the future. Based on what we've learned, we will also be considering educational resources that can be useful for the community. If folks have ideas for educational information or legal apps that could be useful to the web monetization, we're interested in hearing your ideas as well.

What community support would benefit your project?

For those in the community who we worked with, it would be helpful to let other GFTW community members know (without sharing confidential details) how important it is to get early stage legal services for your project.

Folks can send projects that need legal services to our legal services request form at this link.

https://www.newmediarights.org/about_us/contact_us

New Media Rights - Free Legal Consultations

New Media Rights — Wed, 02 Dec 2020 23:50:05 +0000

Hi everyone!

We are New Media Rights, a nonprofit program that provides pro-bono (free) and low cost legal services to independent online creators and startups whose projects require specialized internet, intellectual property, privacy and media law expertise. We are one of the mid-level grantees, and we were specifically given the grant to help other Grant for the Web grantees with the legal aspects of your projects should you be interested in talking to an attorney about legal issues.

We are offering free 1-hour legal consultation sessions for Grant for the Web recipients and others who are involved in Web Monetization projects. After the consultation, appropriate projects may receive additional free or low-cost legal services. We are licensed attorneys based in California, which means that we might not be able to speak to the specific laws of other states. We also can only advise on US laws.

If you’re based in the US or encountering US legal questions, come talk to our team about your copyright and trademark concerns, contracts, and other legal issues you might encounter working with Web Monetization tech!

Should you need assistance, or are interested in signing up for a free consultation, please contact us via the contact form on our website (https://www.newmediarights.org/about_us/contact_us)

Just some examples of the types of work that we do for creatives, developers, and startups:

*Preventative work (during the conceptual phase of the project)
*Transactional work (during the creation phase)
*Pre-publication review (to spot legal issues before publication / launch)
*Response to third party legal demands after publication/launch/distribution

These might include:

*advising on copyright, trademark, and data collection issues to know when you may need a lawyer or may need to change your approach at the concept state to comply with these laws
*drafting a terms of service and privacy policy before launching your online platform
*reviewing a documentary film for fair use or software for proper crediting of open licenses
*assisting with licensing requests / distribution contracts or bogus cease and desist letters

And again, our work -- even beyond a consultation -- would be subsidized under the grant.