Podsafe Or Not Podsafe?

Podcasters everywhere are subject to local laws designed to protect rights owners from unauthorised exploitation and illegal copying of their work. In the UK, the vast majority of podcast music, does not comply with the "Podsafe" concept, as a scroll down the Podcast Nation blogroll will show, but as yet, nobody seems to be worrying too much about it.

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.

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.

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.

Podsafe - Wiki.
Podsafe - Technorati.
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