Thursday, April 21, 2005 11:39 AM
Forbes columnist Sam Whitmore most recent column offers an
interesting look at podcasting ('plawdcasting,' for the legally-inclined). Mr. Whitmore is himself a podcaster and he raises a number of interesting issues, questions and possibilities that arise from podcasting, including licensing issues, advertising possibilities and the disruptive nature of the technology itself.
Of particular interest, Mr. Whitmore highlights two areas of concern that he feels need to be addressed: licensing and podcasting integrity.
The licensing issue has been bouncing around the blawgosphere for some time, and Mr. Whitmore's experience in attempting to discern what is and what is not legal, follows closely a number of the discussions already started. Based on Mr. Whitmore's commentary, it seems apparent that organizations like American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers and Broadcast Music, the Recording Industry Association of America, and the individual companies in the entertainment industry are still coming to terms with what their eventual policies and positions will be.
In terms of the issue of podcasting integrity (and this was something of which I had not thought), Mr. Whitmore offers a demonstration of how simple it is to manipulate the digital files created by other podcasters. In his case, he took a recording of a John Edwards podcast, digitally altered it and created a version of the original podcast that was very different than what Mr. Edwards created. As Mr. Whitmore continues:
[m]y purpose here is to demonstrate how effectively an amateur can misrepresent the words of a powerful person. As of this writing, there's no legal language on the Edwards site prohibiting me from slicing and dicing. If I can do it, imagine what the malicious in both parties can do. Existing licensing structures need to change and new ones created where none exist. Perhaps a 'No Derivative Works' Creative Commons license might be appropriate: authors let others copy, distribute, display and perform only verbatim copies of their work, not derivative works based upon it.
[Read full article]
The issues Mr. Whitemore raises are only a couple of many that I am sure will arise. And, members of the blawgosphere like Denise Howell, among other plawdcasters, are already on the case.