Darknet

Legal guide for podcasters

Attorneys Colette Vogele and Mia Garlick (general counsel of Creative Commons and treasurer of Ourmedia) were the legal minds behind the most comprehensive Legal guide for podcasters you'll find anywhere. It's also available in pdf format and they'll soon have it available for print on demand from Lulu.com.

'Just use podsafe music'

Colette Vogel (photo) had this summary of her panel with Denise Howell, Kelli Richards and Gerd Leonhard at the Portable Media Expo earlier this month.

Podcasting video is now live

The video of the Law & Public Policy panel at Duke University's Symposium on Podcasting is now online here.

Streams of all the other sessions are up here.

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.

Hollywood wants to control your podcasts

Anyone flying up to Portland next week for the Podcast Hotel?

From Podcasthotel.com: Questions Surface About Podshow License. Excerpt:

Cory Doctorow looks at the contract for PodShow and the Podsafe Music Network and comes up with some issues that he says should raise concerns about free expression.

Namely, it puts control into the hands of the music labels about what is said on any podcast show that uses the service.

The problem is that in return for access to PodCast music, you agree to a license that prohibits you from referencing “software piracy (warez, cracking, etc.), hacking, phreaking, emulators, ROM’s, or illegal MP3 activity” or saying anything “deemed unsuitable or harmful to the reputation of PodShow or the Licensor.”

This is pretty nuts. Since when does the guy who provides the music to the radio station get to dictate what you’re allowed to talk about? Is the price of commercial music in a PodCast that you have to yield unlimited, arbitrary editorial control to a music label?

And it gets worse — under the terms of the license, you also agree to pay legal costs and damages to PodShow if you say something that gets them sued — even if the judge eventually finds in your favor.

'G'Day World' podcast

I had a fine time on the Fourth of July chatting for an hour with Cameron Reilly, host of the Australian podcast G'Day World (part of the Podcast Network), talking about Darknet, Ourmedia, where technology is taking us, my favorite movies, and other sundry stuff.

He's just posted the podcast here (the direct link to the mp3 is here). And G'Day World's feed is here.

Cross-posted to New Media Musings.

On NPR today: 'On the Media'

I just came home from lunch in San Francisco when my 6-year-old ran up to me and said, "Dad, you were on the radio!" Ah, the lure and power of big media. Will it still hold true when Bobby is my age? I'm not so sure.

I did a quick interview at KQED's studios on Wednesday with Bob Garfield of NPR's On the Media about "Darknet," and it just aired. (The fact that I've been on the show a couple of times aside, I think it consistently ranks as one of the best-done programs on the creative destruction happening in the media world today.)

Here's the streaming mp3 of the program (I think you need Real to hear it), and a description of the segment from their website:

For every move that media industries have taken to protect their copyrights, there has been an equal and opposite countermove by consumers. In Darknet: Hollywood's War Against the Digital Generation, J.D. Lasica explores the realm in which so-called pirates operate - slicing, dicing, and sharing media to their hearts' content. Lasica talks to Bob about how Hollywood is driving consumers further into the shadows and under the radar.

I was glad to see that they used a mash-up that I'd sent them of rx's My Name Is Rx, a remix of George W. Bush's speeches and presidental debate verbiage set to the Rolling Stones' Sympathy for the Devil. (Download it here.)

By coincidence, I was just coming back from lunch with ... Bob Garfield, who's in town to give the keynote at a marketing conference Monday, and Brendan Greeley, who's working with Christopher Lydon on open-source radio (and is in Berkeley this weekend to see his girlfriend). We wound up having brunch at Santorini, a new Greek restaurant near Union Square.

By further coincidence, Brendan was also on On the Media today (though he was interviewed by someone else). So natch, we chatted about blogging, podcasting, the future of media, advertising models, the remix revolution, why people go to blogging conferences, Jeff Jarvis's new job, and lots more, between gyros and moussaka and lots of caffeine.

Great to finally meet Bob G. (pictured above) in person (had I known Google Images would be so barren of photos, I would have brought my camera). And I'll be working with Brendan in the coming months to create a resource on Ourmedia for podcasters to learn about what they can and can't do under the law.

Podcasting and the future of radio

This morning I got up early and, before the coffee kicked in, participated by phone as a guest on the Diane Rehm Show, where we discussed the future of radio.

I lobbed a couple of grenades, such as suggesting that commercial radio is dead, and that podcasting - personalized, portable, on-demand Internet audio - is the wave of the future.

Diane Rehm wasn't in today, but Steve Roberts - erstwhile Washington journalist and hubbie of Cokie Roberts - served as a knowledgeable host. Also joining the roundtable were

The show's producers agreed to let us post the broadcast on Ourmedia, so now I've got to figure out how to grab the stream and convert it to MP3.

The Diane Rehm Show comes out of American University and is syndicated nationally on NPR. That makes my third NPR guest spot since last summer. Now, we just need to get some discussion of the personal media revolution on Fresh Air.

Cross-posted to New Media Musings.

Is it illegal to podcast copyrighted music?

New Communications Forum: Podcast Music Licensing Not as Financially Daunting as Bloggers Surmise.

Podcasts, podcasts everywhere - but is your podcast already illegal? That was the discussion opened on the Silicon Valley Watcher site earlier this month. However, while the article titled "Why Your Podcast is Probably Already Illegal" brings up the important issue of podcast music licensing, its quoted music license fee calculations were inaccurate.

It is true that podcasters, in order to play popular music in their podcasts, must pay a fee for the right to play these tunes. If you are a podcaster playing popular tunes in their entirety during your podcast but have not paid for a music license then, yes, your podcast may already be illegal. However, the article's quote that the cost to obtain a license is more than $750 is over-inflated. ...

Podcasting, music and the law

bestkungfu blog: Podcasting, music and the law.

ASCAP updated its Internet licensing to reference podcasts – oh, excuse me, pod-casts – last week. The move may have been intended to answer some questions as to the legality of using music in podcasts, but, as with the webcasting era, it left a lot of people scratching their heads. Is this all we need, just a $288 license to this agency, to be covered through 2005?

Well, there’s some bad news. The truth is that, no, that’s not everything. In fact, the landscape for music licensing is even more confusing than most people would imagine, and it at times consists of entities who may not even want to sell you a license. ...

The copyright fairy

Derrick Oien, who's one of our chief music scouts at Ourmedia.org and a former exec at MP3.com, emails to say: "I did a KNBC TV San Diego interview about podcasting last week and a KPBS radio show with Dave Winer this week. Dave and I had a disagreement over copyright that led to the following post on User Generated Content.

At one point in the conversation I stated that if the two of us were talking, and we had a Who song playing in the background, that if we recorded that conversation and made into podcast then this would be copyright infringement unless we had the permission of the various rights holders. Dave retorted that he didn't necessarily think that is correct. ...

What I found particularly funny about this exchange is how some of the blogger intelligentsia hold themselves out as thoughtful and informed yet fail to do the simple homework when all of the source materials are freely available for them. The DMCA? You can find it online. The 2nd district court rulings in MP3.com vs RIAA? Online. 9th district Court rulings in Napster vs RIAA? Online. Kazaa, etc. etc. Sorry for the lack of links but you get my point.

The conclusion that I have come to is that many including Dave wish that the Copyright fairy would come along and change the existing body of law because its just not fair. Although I agree with many who think that it would be great if we could use samples and play mashups, and play the songs of our youth in podcasts and home videos etc. the reality today is that you can't. ...

Go read the whole thing. Derrick's absolutely right. Once again, the law has not caught up with technology or with creative culture.

That's what my book Darknet is all about.

Meantime, Wil Wheaton goes off on ASCAP and the idea that podcasters have to pay blanket license fees to include copyrighted music on amateur podcasts.

I'm with Wil. Unfortunately, the law is not.

Later: Minneapolis law student Joe Gratz has more here: ASCAP Licenses Podcasting; Doesn’t Get Podcasting.

Creating Podcast feeds

Via Jeff Jarvis: : Feedburner has started a service to create Podcast feeds.

Podcasting and the rise of personal media

Over at E-Media Tidbits, Steve Yelvington does a great job of explaining the Podcasting phenomenon:

Podcasting and the Rise of Personal Media

I've been looking at podcasting these last few days. Podcasting is a rip/mix/burn term -- ripped from iPod, mixed with broadcasting, and burned into new types of RSS readers such as iPodder, Doppler, and for Mac users, iPodderX.

[I don't think Steve means to suggest that the iPod is necessarily a part of podcasting; it's not. And broadcasting is perhaps the wrong word here: it's about webcasts. Podcasting is about time-shifted audio, often on a portable device. Here's Wikipedia's definition.]

Podcasting, like RSS, is simple. RSS2.0 feeds can contain "enclosures," which are little more than the URL of a downloadable media file. A reader who knows about enclosures can automatically download audio (or potentially video) files overnight and synch them to an iPod or MP3 player, or on a desktop computer. It's portable and helps solve some of the irritating practical problems of fat media over the Internet, but more importantly, it feeds a new phenomenon called "personal media."

People are creating their own media space with these devices, disintegrating other peoples' products (such as music albums) and reintegrating the parts in new ways. That's rip/mix/burn. It cuts broadcasting out of the loop. I talked with a woman the other day who has not listened to radio since she got an iPod two years ago. "How do you learn about new things?" I asked. "From friends who are DJs," she explained. Not all of us have such friends, and we do need some sort of outside input into our personal space.

Podcasting adds that input: value-added programming, new information, news ... chosen by the consumer, heard on the user's schedule, in the personal-media environment. Much of the early experiments documented at audio.weblogs.com are terrible, self-indulgent dreck, but quality programming also is emerging.

Seattle's KOMO, Boston's WGBH, and Future Tense (Minnesota Public Radio) program host Jon Gordon have been experimenting with podcasting of programs and segments. This is not radio, and it's not yet clear how programs should be presented and packaged in this medium, but broadcasters that want a future in this personal-media space should take heed. If you're conducting such an experiment, I'd like to know about it.

ourmedia, too, is interested in posting podcasts on the Internet Archive's servers, so if anyone comes across podcast programs with a Creative Commons license attached, please let me know.

I write at considerable length about personal media in Darknet (in fact, it makes up the bulk of Chapter 1), but this is the first time I've seen it used by a writer (Steve's a friend) in the media space rather than in the tech gadget sector. You'll be seeing tons more about personal media in the coming years. As Steve smartly discerned, it's about taking media into your own hands.

Podcasting and the law

We plan to include podcasting as one of the channels in ourmedia. Here's Denise Howell the other day on the latest:

A discussion sparked by Doc Searls is exploring the differences between downloading audio to play at your leisure (probably on a portable device) and Internet radio (the latter of which is subject to a labyrinthine royalty process and other regulation).

Meanwhile, Adam Curry, John Palfrey, and Derek Slater are wisely paying attention to the copyright ramifications of using recorded music in a podcast. If you're not a Mac/iMovie user you might not be familiar with Freeplay Music, a serviceable resource if you're looking for free background music for "private non-commercial use" — which the site's FAQs define as generally including "using music on a personal Web site" or "content that you produce for friends and family." It's not entirely clear that would include music put in a podcast (probably not if there is any commercial aspect to it), but it's a good start. So is Creative Commons's Search. Soon, you'll be able to add Ourmedia to the list, which at the moment is a worthy cause in search of some forward looking pro bono legal assistance.

An introduction to podcasts

The LA Times discovers podcasts. These blog-based homemade radio shows are the biggest thing most people haven't heard of yet.

First came pirate radio, then Internet radio. But in the past month, a new way of circumventing the big, bad broadcast corporations has emerged: podcasts.

Tune in to these blog-based homemade radio shows and you'll hear any number of things: a weekly hourlong program about board games; a daily amateur photography show hosted by an Australian computer programmer; regular people, unschooled in the ways of radio, talking about anything and everything the way real people talk -- clumsily, with curses, dead air and all. ...

A sort of TiVo for amateur online audio, podcasts are radio-style audio files posted inside blogs as MP3s that can be downloaded to an iPod or other portable player. And they represent the next wave of peer-to-peer content sharing -- unlimited by available FM/AM spectrum, untouched by FCC regulation, portable and full of possibility. ...

A month ago, the only podcast was ''Trade Secrets,'' a daily news-and-technology talk show co-hosted by podcasting's pioneers: former MTV VJ Adam Curry and software developer Dave Winer. ...

In the four weeks since ''Trade Secrets'' was born, the number of podcasts has jumped to at least six dozen. Following the lead of ''Trade Secrets,'' in mid-September a handful of Canadian college students launched ''Blogosphere Radio,'' a weekly talk show about what bloggers are blogging about. Late September saw the launch of ''Esc From the World!,'' a tech-support podcast started by New Jersey eighth-grader Matthew Bischoff; ''Northwest Noise,'' an Oregon-based music-and-talk show that's been keeping its eye on Mount St. Helens; and ''GeekSpeak,'' a weekly program about board games coming out of Dallas.

''We could never do this show on radio, because who's going to want to give an hour to board gaming?'' says Scott Alden, owner of 1,000-plus games and co-host of ''GeekSpeak,'' a podcast that's been downloaded at least 5,200 times since its debut two weeks ago.

Commercial radio broadcasters would never touch such a niche program, especially one that drew just a few thousand listeners. They would never air an unedited, error-prone show hosted by self-described ''geeks'' or amateurs.

But podcasts don't follow a traditional broadcast model. They follow in the footsteps of blogs, from which podcasts were born. In the blogging world, success isn't measured in market share and ad dollars. It's measured in the personal satisfaction of creative expression and the organic growth of a relatively small audience via word of mouth.

I'm glad that two of my friends — Doc Searls and Dave Winer — are at the epicenter of this fledgling new form of participatory media. Podcasting is in good hands.