Your mission - should you choose to accept it - is to
launch your course knowing your content is legally sound and that you have the legal terms and statements you need to protect yourself and flourish
without it costing the earth in legal fees. Imagine how good that will feel.
For course creators in the US, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand
Don't be paralysed by a fear of getting the legal stuff wrong and don't let the legal stuff trip you up
Have you ever wanted to create and launch an online course, only to find yourself worrying about what could happen to you or your business or your family if you don’t get the legal stuff right? We’ve all felt those alarm bells. Or perhaps you’ve launched an online course only to think, "damn, I’ve not given a moment’s thought to the legal side of things!" Or perhaps you’ve subconsciously put your head in the sand when it comes to getting the legal stuff right, due to a feeling that it’s too hard, too expensive, or both.
Now here’s the thing: when we launch an online course on the Internet, we are launching it internationally and to a potentially large and diverse audience, most of whom we won’t know. Launching a course in these circumstances without understanding what, legally, we can and cannot do, and without taking steps to protect yourself, is as unwise as going to sea without a life jacket or jumping from a plane without an emergency chute.
Why is it unwise? Because various things could go wrong:
- we might fail to take steps to protect the course content that we’ve poured our heart and soul into
- we might make mistakes by copying or cobbling together pieces of other people’s content, thinking we can, when actually we can’t
- we might use Creative Commons-licensed content but not comply with the licence requirements, which would leave us exposed as the licence falls away and the copyright owner would have grounds for complaint
- we might use email addresses and market our course in a manner that breaches anti-spam laws
- we might fail to comply with privacy law transparency requirements, or do something with your customers’ personal information, thinking you can, only to find you’re breaching privacy laws
- we might leave ourselves open to claims against us in negligence, based on people relying on our course content and alleging that we've assumed a duty of care, breached that duty, and caused them some kind of loss.
Online Courses and Legal Stuff can save you from all this
With Online Courses and Legal Stuff, you can take your leap of faith into the online course industry, with the confidence you'll land safely because you've ticked legal boxes that protect your business and help it thrive, and all this without it costing the earth in lawyers' fees.
Launch your course knowing your content is legally sound and that you've taken steps to protect yourself
Here’s what you'll get when you sign up
You'll get immediate access to 9 modules that will teach you the key things you need to understand to avoid costly legal mistakes. You'll learn how to protect your content, respect other people's copyright, license your own piece of valuable content to help other people promote your course, comply with anti-spam laws, comply with privacy statement requirements, and put a disclaimer, privacy statement, refund policy, and terms of use in place. If you want to, you could complete the course in a day. Once you've completed it, you'll be able to launch your course with confidence, knowing you've taken key steps to avoid costly legal mistakes and protect yourself and your content.
Protect your valuable content
You'll learn how to take steps to protect your content based on copyright law and contract law, and you'll learn what you can do if someone tries to rip off your content.
Avoid copyright infringement
You'll learn how to avoid infringing other people's copyright when incorporating their written content, images, audio, or video in our own course. You'll learn what you can and cannot do.
Find and use Creative Commons licensed content
You'll learn how to find and use Creative Commons-licensed content, including images, audio and video, while also meeting the licence's attribution requirements.
Encourage others to promote your course
You'll learn how to license a valuable piece of your own content under a Creative Commons licence so to help others and encourage them to promote your course.
Build and use your email list without breaching anti-spam laws
You'll learn that, in many countries, building your email list requires you to comply with both privacy law and anti-spam law requirements.
Understand privacy statement requirements
You'll learn about personal information and that, as a course provider, you're collecting personal information and should have a privacy statement.
Get your refund policies right
Learn about the value of refund policies, different approaches you can take to them, and some 'must haves' in the wording of your refund policies to ensure expectations and limits are clear.
Protect yourself with disclaimers and terms of use
Learn how you can protect yourself and your content with disclaimers and terms of use, and what else your terms of use need to contain.
What you'll find in the course modules
There are 9 modules, each with a focus on acquiring relevant knowledge and enabling
you to take practical steps to deal with the legal stuff
1
Module 1: Protecting your original creations from those who would pillage and plunder
- Two key questions and two key answers we need to be thinking about
- Copyright protection of our course content
- Contractual protection of our course content
- How we can check if people are ripping off our content and, if they are, what we can do about it
- Action time
2
Module 2: Creating killer written content that won’t backfire and slap you in the face
- Why this can be an important issue
- Why other people’s written content is usually protected by copyright
- The need for permission if we use it
- Busting common copyright myths so you don’t get caught up in them
- Using written content that is licensed under a Creative Commons licence
- How to comply with attribution requirements of Creative Commons licences
- Using materials you’ve developed for someone else as an employee
- Being careful about other people’s terms of use
- Action time
3
Module 3: Using others’ images to your advantage without being told to cease and desist
- Why we need to take care when using images
- Using Creative Commons-licensed images
- Using images from Unsplash, Pixabay and Pexels
- Risks of using Creative Commons licensed images and images from Unsplash, Pixabay and Pexels
- Using alternative image repositories with lower risk
- Having your own photoshoot done
- Action time
4
Module 4: Bringing music to one’s ears without its owner deafening yours
- Why we need to take care when using music tracks and sound files
- Why we should avoid using unlicensed music
- Using Creative Commons-licensed music
- Paying for the use of licensed music
- Action time
5
Module 5: Including others’ videos in your course content without being struck out
- Why we need to take care when using other people's videos
- What we can and cannot do with videos we find on YouTube and Vimeo
- Embedding videos
- Ripping a YouTube or Vimeo video for download, or recording one with screen-recording software
- Circumstances where we can just take a video from YouTube or Vimeo and insert it into our own recorded course video - Creative Commons-licensed videos
- Action time
6
Module 6: Encouraging people to promote your course by licensing particular content on Creative Commons terms
- Why you might want to do this
- How you can release a piece of content that’s completely your own original creation, under a Creative Commons licence
- How you can release a piece of content under a Creative Commons licence where you’ve created most of it but you’ve used someone else’s Creative Commons-licensed image
- Whether you can release a piece of content under a Creative Commons licence where you’ve created most of it but you’ve used an image from Unsplash, Pexels or Pixabay
- Action time
7
Module 7: Managing your mailing list like a marvel and not a muppet
- Why this is an important topic
- Main areas of law relevant to the creation, maintenance and use of email lists
- Discussion of main laws in each of United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand
- Practical implications of these laws
- Action time
8
Module 8: Understanding privacy statement requirements and preparing and posting your own one when you need to
- How, as online course providers, we are collecting people's personal information
- What privacy statements are all about
- Why we need to think about this, even when using online course platforms
- Discussion of main privacy laws in each of the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand
- What the law requires of online course providers and how you can comply with them
- Action time
9
Module 9: Protecting yourself, your cash and your course with disclaimers and terms of use
- How and why liability or financial risks can arise in the context of providing our online courses
- Three steps we can take to reduce or limit those risks
- Disclaimers and how to write one
- Contractual limitations of liability
- Refund policies
- How to include clauses covering the steps – as well as other clauses – in terms of use
- Action time
Bonus
You'll also get access to automation tools!
It's all well and good to learn about the need for privacy statements and terms of use, but writing them is another matter entirely. That's why we've included access to automation tools that will help you build your own. No other course on what we cover combines the power of knowledge with the practicality of automation tools.
With this automation tool, you'll be able to prepare a draft privacy statement in no time. The automation tool has been developed with the privacy laws of the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand in mind. Respecting customer privacy is both a legal requirement and a building block of the trust and confidence that customers have in your service but getting privacy statements right can take a lot of work. This tool does the legwork for you.
With this automation tool, you'll be able to build draft terms of use rapidly. They'll address your identity, customer agreement to terms, course(s) and prices, use of access credentials, immediate performance and loss of right to withdraw (if you're based in the UK or EU), intellectual property rights (ownership, licensing, and prohibitions), acceptable use, disclaimers, limitation of liability, indemnity, privacy, refunds, and general terms (including governing law and jurisdiction).
About your instructor,
Richard Best
Richard is a lawyer who has been working on the legal stuff for 25 years, first as a litigator and then as a technology, public and commercial lawyer, in both in-house and law firm roles. He has practised law in three countries and been exposed to the laws of many more. His practice sees him getting deeply involved in matters relating to technology, contracting, intellectual property, privacy, and social media, to name a few. He's a lawyer that gets into the trenches too, having created his own blogs, ebook and audiobook, his own and others’ websites, online contract generation tools, an online privacy toolkit, and his own course. He likes to help people achieve their goals.
What people say about Richard's work
The following testimonials are all from real people who have worked with Richard and are familiar with his work. Their positions and testimonials are all real but, for confidentiality reasons, pseudonyms are used instead of their real names.
Don
Manager of supply strategy
'able to translate ... complex ... supply strategies into manageable contractual frameworks'
"It is rare to find such a talented commercial legal capability ... . Richard has an incisive mind and is able to translate extremely complex commercial supply strategies into manageable contractual frameworks that both allow value to be provided and mitigate commercial risk.”
George
Chief Legal Counsel
'highest calibre'
"We thought your presentation was of the highest calibre and want to thank you again. Your video is going to be up in lights on our intranet."
Elizabeth
Assistant General-Counsel
'remarkably versatile'
"Richard’s deep IT knowledge and application make him remarkably versatile."
Lati
In-house counsel
'so clear and helpful'
"I love the training you've done. Thank you so much for doing that. It's so clear and helpful."
Manny
Senior manager
'precision, insights, and all-round commitment'
"I’ve ... always valued [Richard's] precision, insights, and all-round commitment to high-quality advice. He is outstanding in his understanding of personal information collection, use and sharing."
Karena
Employment law barrister
'clear, succinct, useful'
"You have answered everything clearly and succinctly, in a most useful way."
Incredible value that you won't find anywhere else
The course and its automation tools provide incredible value. You could pay thousands of dollars just to have a lawyer advise you on one of the module topics above, not to mention the thousands of dollars it could cost to have a lawyer prepare a draft privacy statement or terms of use for you. If you were to seek advice on all the topics covered and have a lawyer draft you a privacy statement and terms of use, you could easily spend between $5,000-$10,000, if not significantly more. For now we've kept our price at a much lower level to enable more course providers to launch with the confidence they won't land on legal landmines.
Special introductory price
$
197
(+ sales tax if charged)
For this one time price you get access to all modules and the document builders
30 day money back guarantee
If, for any reason, you are not satisfied that the course can help you, you can get a full refund at any time within 30 days of your purchase.
Frequently asked questions
This course is best suited for course creators in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. It will still be valuable for people in other countries (including EU member states) but the local laws of other countries have not been considered.
Yes, it will. We work through this in Module 1, with a practical exercise that helps you to write your own copyright statement that you can apply to your course materials.
Yes, it will. The topic of disclaimers is introduced in Module 1 and then, in Module 9, we'll talk about disclaimers in more detail.
Yes, it certainly will. In Module 8 we talk through the privacy statement requirements that exist in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand, and then you're given access to a privacy statement builder that will help you build your privacy statement quickly and painlessly.
Yes it will. In Module 9 we'll talk about key components of terms of use for course creators and then you'll be given access to a terms of use builder that you can use to build your own.
No, I will not. The course is provided for information purposes only. Your taking of this course does not create any lawyer-client or attorney-client relationship with me. My disclaimer applies.
A personal note from me to you
I've poured hundreds of hours into this course because I'm passionate about it and see the challenges that course creators can have when it comes to getting the legal stuff right. I have designed it to help you launch your course with confidence, rather than anxiety, in the knowledge that you've considered key legal issues and taken a range of practical steps to reduce your risk and avoid landing on a legal landmine. I wish you every success.
Launch your course knowing your content is legally sound and that you've taken steps to protect yourself