p2pnet - rss feed: UK podcast danger alert
p2p news / p2pnet: On the right is a pic of HRH prince Charles, heir to the British throne, and he’s a, “big fan of podcasts,” says Deek Deekster on Podcast Nation.
But even if Charles does like tuning in, most podcast music doesn’t comply with the “Podsafe” concept, “as a scroll down the Podcast Nation blogroll will show,” says Deekster.
For the moment, nobody seems to be worrying too much about it, he goes on, but, “Appropriate licensing for podcasting, as differentiated from streaming, downloading, or filesharing, is clearly going to be an area of legal debate as UK podcasts begin to commercialise.
“With currently no blanket license devised by authorities to cover UK podcasting, and the PRS/MCPS Music Alliance at loggerheads with the BPI on the issue of royalty rates for music downloads, podcasters currently have no legal framework for using music and paying royalties in the same way as radio and television, and using copyright material means getting multiple individual permissions.”
BPI is short for British Phonographic Industry, the so-called trade organization owned by the members of the Big Four record label cartel and which, like its brethren, the RIAA, CRIA, ARIA, etc, is being used by the cartel as a blunt instrument to beat people into buying shoddy, over-priced ‘product’.
“The internet does great word-of-mouth service to unsigned bands and big-name artists alike, as David Bowie (among others) attests, but as some popular independent UK podcasts now maintain syndicated audiences of many thousands per week, the possibility is with continuing pressure from record companies that successful podcasters not complying with the podsafe directive may soon face measures to contain their illegal use of copyright materials,” says Podcast Nation.
“UK Podcasters can point out the important differences between their low-level, fair and/or artistic use, and organised criminal piracy, and they can argue that they should pay for copyright music at fair rate based on audience numbers rather than be crippled by mainstream media-sized costs.
“But, if the UK music and broadcast licensing authorities fail to find a way for podcasters to use copyright material, and podcasters fail to make their voices heard, people who use ‘unpodsafe’ music could one day find themselves, like file-sharers, being sued in UK courts.”
Also See:
Podcast Nation - Podsafe Or Not Podsafe?, February 22, 2006
shoddy, over-priced - DoJ probes Big Music downloads, March 3, 2006
