Hello, I was thinking of starting a blog that has tutorials for Microsoft products such as Outlook, Excel, and possibly Wordpress. Are there any copyright infringments or legal issues that may arise if I have tutorial movies describing how to perform certain task on these programs? Thanks, Jack
Hey Jack, I don't think there will be any problems as long as you don't use copyrighted material. Why don't you run a search though different search engines and see whats out there already. Kick it around it sounds good. Maybe you can be an affiliate for the video professor and also sell other tutorial programs at your blog. Cheers, Karl
Hi, I don't see a problem with what you want to do. But, and yes a big but, I would ask Microsoft for permission to do what your doing. They will get back to you and I know the answer will be yes it's ok. I used to work for a Microsoft support center, not even part of Microsoft, contracted out. We would not even survive if we didn't have a website tutorial, Power Point tutorials, and video tutorials of every step to just about any program in Microsoft. And we would actually make these tutorials and pass them amongst ourselves using a website that we would put together, for our use. And we never got in trouble with Microsoft. We had about 400 tech support workers. So I'm pretty sure your safe. But I would pay an Attorney to check it out for $150 bucks just to be certain. Especially since I think this is a very good idea for a super support blog or vblog. There are Tons of ways you could Market this idea as well. You will be very busy and readers will be hungry for content. Good Luck...it's a lot of work but you might be onto something for a Niche website featuring Microsoft all day and all night of tutorials. I would go there to use it. Not just consumers but support technicians and webmasters that do training on the side. You will probably want to outsource some of the work, your going to find yourself busy with products tutorials due to huge demand. Good luck again, CyberQuest
Even with permissions from the companies involved you're going to want to make sure you carefully script what you're doing when discussing specific companies and products on a regular basis. Seeking legal advice is a very wise suggestion so I wanted to ditto it. I've worked with Brand Managers in the past and can tell you that they're very diligent in monitoring every usage of their company products, logos and trademarks. If they even suspect you're shining a negative light on them--even if it's unintentional--they'll be all over it (or you) in a heartbeat. There was a big story about this a couple months ago when a popular blogger was having trouble with his cable company, he mentioned their poor customer service on Twitter and in like an hour or so he had a senior Exec. from the company calling him on the phone. That shows how far Brand Managers are going to monitor their company images. This cable company has people monitoring Twitter of all things. So if you're going to focus on specific companies or products, or use screen captures/video in any way, do the smart thing and protect yourself early on with professional legal advice. It'll be worth every penny in the long run.