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DRM by asking nicely
The blogosphere has been pretty quiet about yesterday's first
official
podcast of This American Life. My guess is that nobody wants to jinx
this long-awaited and happy state of affairs.
In early June, I was one of a number of folks who noticed that the show's
website had switched audio formats from Real to MP3, and who interpreted
that move as a tacit endorsement of do-it-yourself
podcatching. On
June 20, I published
and then retracted a takedown request from TAL's web wrangler,
Elizabeth Meister. In the flurry of ensuing conversation, here are
some quotes that stand out:
Jared
Benedict:
Contrary to posts on Boing Boing and elsewhere, Jon Udell and I did
not receive a "nastygram" or formal ceast and desist letter. Rather we
received friendly emails from Ms. Meister, This American Life's
webmaster, making a request to take down the hyperlinks and RSS feeds,
or she'd regrettably have to get lawyers involved.
While Ms. Meister did miss the mark by accusing us of copyright
infringement without a clear understanding of what we were actually
doing, or what copyright law allows, she was trying to be polite and
friendly which I appreciate.
To be clear, I was not storing or making any copies of their work, I
was simply providing links to publicly accessible MP3's hosted on This
American Life's own servers. It is my position that hyperlinking to
publicly accessible MP3's is perfectly legal (see Ticketmaster
v. Tickets.com) and fundamental to the existence of the web.
While I am confident that I am breaking no law, I am respecting TAL
wishes by taking down the podcast and archive page which points to
their MP3's. This American Life has decided to take the bizarre
approach to Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) by asking nicely...
which I suppose is better than using some Windows only Microsoft Media
Player DRM or Sony Rootkit DRM.
Nick Carr:
Now, Jon Udell is an honorable guy, and I'm sure he doesn't think of downloading those files as an act of thievery in any way, shape or form. But what kind of strange logic leads someone to say that "although the archive page at This American Life still says that you can't download files, it's not true anymore." That's like saying that if I go out to the supermarket and leave my front door unlocked, then it's ok to come into my house and steal my china. Just because something's not locked up doesn't mean you can help yourself to it.
David Berlind:
Context really doesn't matter. If the URL exists, you must acquit. Otherwise, if you're putting MP3 files on the Web and you don't want someone pointing to them from the contexts of their choice, then, instead of sending takedown notices to that someone, take down the content itself. That way, nobody will point to it.
A
Typical Joe:
I'm a fan of This American Life; I never listen to it.
This was and remains a complex affair. Along with
Jared Benedict and many others, I believe that use and
recontextualization are fundamental to the web.
But just because you can use and recontextualize doesn't mean you
always should. So I withdrew a blog posting for the first and only
time, and I regretted the grief I caused Elizabeth Meister and TAL.
But I went further than that. Like Typical Joe (quoted above), TAL
became the favorite show that I never listened to. Many others
did, on MP3 players, ignoring TAL's extraordinary "DRM by asking
nicely" stance. But for me that option became as unappealing as
Audible or iTunes downloads, or Real streams. So I've not heard TAL
since June, and I'm greatly looking forward to Episode 203.
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