RIAA rep at Duke's podcasting conference

For me, the highlight of Duke University's Symposium on Podcasting so far has been the Law & Public Policy session (exclusive of my participation as a panelist). Other participants were moderator James Boyle, head of Duke's Center for the Public Domain; Jennifer Jenkins of Duke's Law School and a key executive at the same center ; Jason Schultz, staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation; and a last-minute stand-in, the personable Michael J. Huppe, Senior Vice President for Business & Legal Affairs and Deputy General Counsel for the Recording Industry Association of America.

Jennifer and Jason did terrific jobs of outlining the contours of fair use. I gave a visual presentation that included a video clip I shot, an MP3 mash-up of President Bush, and an outtake from the DVD of "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" -- the scene with the singing dolphins.

Huppe deserves kudos for stepping into the academic equivalent of the lion's den, and he took some tough questions. Some outtakes from Huppe's talk:

"We're aggressively for podcasting. … We're not the industry we were five years ago."

He said talks were now beginning to create "a simple, efficient, quick licensing structure for podcasting."

"We are not anti-fair use in any way," which drew shakes of the head from the audience.

I was surprised when he lauded Ourmedia.org, saying, "Ourmedia is a great concept, and we have no problem with that at all. When it's our stuff, it's a different issue."

Here's the schedule for the rest of the day. There's a live Webcast of the proceedings (yesterday's stream wasn't working properly).

Postscript: I forgot to mention that the RIAA's Michael Huppe seemed interested in the arguments we were making on the panel and he ponied up $15 to buy a copy of "Darknet" for reading on the return flight. I hope to be in touch with him early next year to discuss a mechanism that would allow podcasters and videobloggers on Ourmedia to license music from the major record labels.