IP Update
July 15th, 2006We promised everyone an update on our efforts regarding Intellectual Property… we just didn’t think it would be this fast or this … disheartening.
Thursday night, I got a private message from Ron Bieber letting us know that Podshow was hosting our REGISTERED MEMBERS feed on their site. Thanks, Ron. Mike and I owe you one.
Needless to say, Mike and I are disappointed in and angry with Podshow. In much the same vein that Manager Tools focuses on behavior, we’re not going to ask what Adam Curry or his staff’s “intent” was. The fact is, their behavior is unacceptable. Maybe it’s not prima facie illegal right now, it is something that to Mike and I is far worse: it is unethical.
Mike said in his first polite “please stop hosting our show without pointing to our site” email, “I don’t think you’re evil.” We still don’t think Podshow is evil… but we can understand why others would think that. We do think they’ve engaged in behavior that is unseemly, and we find it objectionable. If Podshow does not respond appropriately to his latest mail, we’ll ask our lawyer to draft a cease and desist letter.
We recognize that our shows and content - and relatedly, our business model - are different from podcasting in general. Nevertheless, there are reasonable bounds of propriety in all exchanges and industries and common spaces. Knowingly publishing someone else’s content that was clearly marked as “for members only” is unacceptable. We have asked you, our community of listeners, to join us, and we specifically provide the members’ monthly cast as a benefit of joining. Getting those shows without joining devalues the commitment and communication you share with us.
Our lawyer has drafted a license which Mike and I will review in the next few days. Rest assured that there will always be free casts. We always intended that those casts be for personal use. We’ll detail what this means once we nail down all the details.
But we will not change any of our intent or compromise how you are using our work.
Because that’s the ethical thing to do.
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July 19th, 2006 at 10:30 am
Here’s what might have happened. Podshow provides mechanisms for the listener to upload their OPML feeds into podshow and manage the shows they listen to there instead of through iTunes. You then subscribe to your Podshow feed through iTunes and can manage your list of podcasts there.
Since the members only feed is not password protected, it would be very easy in this circumstance for the feed to be loaded into Podshow (or linked to by any other site) in this way. Given that there is no authentication, the Podshow servers would assume its a public feed and expose it everywhere.
I know that I uploaded an OPML file of my feeds into the system during the closed beta test that I was a part of, so for all I know, I introduced the feed into the system myself.
One thing that you guys might consider is password protecting the registered members feed. I know its more work, but if you truly want to keep these feeds for registered users, it may be your only option to make sure that the feed stays private.
– Ron
July 19th, 2006 at 3:31 pm
Ron,
That makes sense; particularly given Podshow’s statement to me that they don’t “crawl” the web looking for podcasts. As a matter of fact, they stated they simply took what was listed on Podcast Alley. If that’s in fact what happened, they will need to address it. I’m sure they will; they’ve been very responsive so far.
I’ve thought about the authentication piece in the past … what has stopped me has been that not all feed readers support authentication terribly well. iTunes does, as does Feeddemon (which Mark and I use quite a bit), but there are some that do not. Up until this point, I’ve errored on the side of making the members-only feed easy to get. Although I understood the “security” on the feed was lax, the current strategy seemed like a reasonable balance between protecting the feed and listener convenience. Probably time to reconsider.
Thanks for the thoughts on what happened … my high-C side has the need to understand what happened!
best regards,
Mike
July 20th, 2006 at 11:29 am
So does mine, hence the large amount of time I spent dissecting it …