the battle of the eardrums2 min read

this recent article from the NYT focuses on a different aspect – iTunes vs. audible.com – but in the process it manages to deliver a concise definition of what podcasting is.
quoted from new york times, june 3rd the battle of the eardrums, by randall stross:

“Podcast” is an ill-chosen portmanteau that manages to be a double misnomer. A podcast does not originate from an iPod. And it is not a broadcast sent out at a particular time for all who happen to receive it.

It is nothing other than an audio or video file that can be created by anyone – add a microphone to your computer, and you’re well on your way. The file begins its public life when you place it on a Web site, available for anyone to download to a computer and, from there, to transfer to a portable player, which may or may not be an iPod. It’s encoded in such a way that the receiving computer can pick it up in successive installments automatically, whenever they are posted to the Web site. Subscribing is the term used for the automatic downloads, and it’s apt.

The delivery mechanism for a podcast subscription is rather slick. There’s no need to go to the trouble of browsing the Web site again for fresh material: the new stuff moves without so much as a beep from the original server to your computer. Then it moves automatically to your attached portable player, keeping the content perpetually refreshed. Welcome to the post-Web era.

If new programs are added daily, you may begin to regard it as a new form of radio broadcast, ready whenever you happen to be free. But the seemingly trivial technical fact that you cannot begin to listen to the program before the file transfer is complete turns out to have important legal implications. A podcast falls in the not-a-broadcast category, which is otherwise known as file-sharing. It cannot include copyrighted music without authorization from the copyright owners. This is why podcasts are not the place for aspiring disc jockeys to realize their fantasies.

oh gawd, i should really stop podcasting. i am so gonna get in trouble. and nobody listens to it anyway. well, not nobody, but…
what will always puzzle me is a very simple, okay, a very naive question: why is it prefectly legal to quote text, as i just did – you just have to make sure that you name the source and author – but to use a partial piece of music in a similar way, like say in a dj mix, is not legal? i always quote my source, i always do something with it [= add it to the mix] and it might lead to somebody getting interested in purchasing it, no? why is music [and film too] handled so differently from text?

2 Replies to “the battle of the eardrums2 min read

  1. Part of the answer to this question might be found in the history of the reproduction of text. As Gutenberg and his pairs invented the industry of printing, it was almost immediately used to spread the Bible – which was the practical answer of the Reformation (to come) to the by then only “valid” interpretation of the text by the catholic church.

    So, in the social and historical conditions of its creation, the reproduction of text is far more associated to the idea of teaching/informing/giving than to the one of property/”rights”/selling.

    When it comes to music and film, their means of reproduction were developed in advanced capitalist societies. This does not mean that they were *only* associated with money-making. But maybe we would not come to such absurd situations as the ones we know nowadays if these means had been created in a time when the concept of “property” had not already spread and obsessed every levels of society.

  2. absolutely coherent reasoning there, klav.
    it might also be an interesting thought that books and texts are somehow always much more literal. i always have to sit down and conciously read text in order to absorb it. [well, actually i can have it read to me as well, but nevermind that for the moment]

    music on the other hand can play anywhere, actively chosen on my system or in the background, in my neighbors flat, on the construction workers radio next door, in the bar i happen to drink my coffee in. i do not have to pay it any attention. but i may. yet it always reaches me, unless i wear earplugs or i am deaf.

    so music is what gets transported via the airwaves and reaches my ear, resonates there. i can actively listen to music or passively. it does not demand my conscious effort as text always does.
    music can be listened in the company of others while reading is done quite usually alone. i don’t have to own one singular cd yet i still get to listen to music.

    these particularities of music of course then raise the question, how do you sell music? the music industry has done this by selling the carriers of music. shellac, vinyl, cassettes, cds, mds and now mp3s. but those carrieres are not the music itself. it has always been sort of absurd to sell music, because how do you sell something that gets trasported via airwaves? but of course obsessive collectors like myself came along and fell in love with the objects, the carriers. and they started collections.

    many further questions are raised. who “owns” music when it is played in a public space? is it illegal if i buy a cd and listen to it with my friends in my living room? and so forth, what if it gets played in the radio? in a podcast, etc?
    now i purchase a piece of music on cd or as mp3 and then share it with my friends via a podcast? in a sense we are just sitting together listening to music. how could that be illegal?

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