Follow up on talk at Stanford

Nervousness aside, my talk yesterday about podcasting went fairly well. It forced me to get the issues being covered in the podcasting guide organized and put together. I received much helpful feedback too. Larry Lessig reminded me that not only is the federal copyright statute a barier to distributing podcasts with commercial "all rights reserved" music in them, but a court in New York held this spring that sound recordings prior to 1972 are protected by state common law copyright. Those rights won't expire until 2067. One more reason to use Creative Commons and other podsafe music alternatives when podcasting.

Another helpful comment I received was from Jennifer Granick which was echoed by Nicole Ozer and Lauren Gelman. Jennifer suggested that the guide not focus (as my talk did) so much on what podcasters cannot do with copyrighted materials which are tied up in all the licensing schemes, but to focus on what podcastesr CAN do. In other words, reframe the issues to provide podcasters with a good understanding of what IS a fair use, what materials ARE in the public domain materials, and how "podsafe" materials CAN be used in podcasts. To that end, the guide should also include examples of uses that can help illustrate the line between fair and unfair uses, etc. This feedback was extremely helpful, and I look forward to incorporating it into the guide that we publish.

Thanks to all who attended and have provided me their feedback to date.