On Thursday of last week, I announced unofficial podcasts for the radio show This American Life. My podcast feed simply provided a deep link to the individual mp3 files on the TAL website, enabling listeners to podcast more than the one most recent episode allowed via the official podcast.
After the FBI raided my house last year, its fair to say that I've become a little bit more cautious. It's not to say that I'm not pursuing the same kinds of projects, it's just that I find out what my legal risks are before I go public. One interesting project that I've been working on has been stalled for the last few months, as my professor and I wait for a sign-off from both the Indiana University counsel's office, as well as a pro-bono outside counsel the nice folks at the EFF were able to put me in touch with. In that project, there are a number of uncertain legal risks, and it may upset some very powerful people - hence the caution.
Which is why, with this unofficial podcast, I made sure to check out my legal options before I put it online. Trespass to chattel - No problem. Copyright infringement - No problem. Deep linking - Probably no problem.
In the event that I got a proper takedown letter written by a lawyer, I felt that I was on really solid ground. What I did not plan for, was an emotional blackmail takedown that made me feel guilty. In hindsight, I suppose I should have predicted it - as it was the same reasonable, and non-heavy handed approach TAL took last year when two other guys setup podcasts.
The message they've given me is this: If you don't remove the podcast, we'll have to spend our limited resources (including the $20 that you donated last week) to pay lawyers to harass you.
I love This American Life. I look forward to a new episode every week, and I don't want to do anything that causes them to pull financial resources away from production.
TAL recently had a podcasting fund-drive, to pay for the $108k in yearly bandwidth costs for their approx 300,000 weekly downloads. In less than three weeks, they raised over $110k - solely by asking for money on their website, and in a request added to the weekly podcast.
Personally, I think that spending over $100k of listener donated money on bandwidth is an almost criminal waste of funds, when archive.org (who also provides free podcasting for Democracy Now) is more than willing to provide free bandwidth.
That massive waste of financial resources, is sadly, not under my control. What is under my control, on the other hand, is if TAL will have to spend several thousand dollars on legal bills - only to probably find out that everything that I've done is above board. This additional waste of resources is not something I would want to shoulder the responsibility for. In addition to wanting to do the right thing - both my girlfriend and my best friend are also fans of TAL, and I'm guessing that they'd give me a good kicking were I not to back down on this one.
Furthermore, I'll be traveling to and from the Privacy Enhancing Technologies workshop in Ottawa, Canada for the next 6 days. I'm really not comfortable with the idea that I'll be passing through US Customs + TSA with the possibility of a cease and desist sent by a US government funded group hanging over my head.
So - effective immediately, the podcast feeds come down. However, given its effectiveness, and lack of involvement of lawyers, I'm posting the letter I received from Daniel Ash at Chicago Public Radio. I hope that it will perhaps serve as an example to other, more litigation trigger happy organizations. Although, somehow I suspect that an appeal to conscience may not be as effective when the group has been voted the worst company in America.
Christopher,
First of all, thanks for your recent donation to support our bandwidth costs for This American Life. It helped make our online pledge drive a great success.
I am also writing because it has come to our attention that you have set up unofficial, “takedown resistant” podcasts of This American Life. We kindly request that you end this practice immediately.
On your blog, you go into impressive detail outlining the gray areas of the law in which you have ensconced your podcasts. Rather than first turning to our lawyers (at a high cost to our member-supported public radio station) to request that they look into the legality of what you’re doing, we’d like to ask nicely for your cooperation. And even if it turns out that you have found some podcasting equivalent to an off-shore tax shelter, we would still request that you stop. Here’s why:
As you mention, radio must adapt to the digital age. Our content is no longer tied to a single delivery system—that old-school box on your kitchen counter. Now, a number of much smaller, new-skool boxes enable you to take media content wherever you like and to consume it whenever you want.
Adapting to these changes is not always a smooth process. As you noted, we’ve been working hard to find the right digital delivery model for This American Life. For years, we did indeed have an exclusive contract with Audible that prevented us from offering a free podcast. Better late than never, we finally renegotiated that deal and launched a free podcast. Yes, it does have some limitations, chiefly that only one episode—our most recent broadcast—is available at any time. But once you’ve downloaded it, it’s yours to keep. And our archives, more than 300 episodes that span 13 years, are available for purchase at just $0.95 an episode.
In your blog, you suggest a different business model:
"The nicer, and smarter approach (in my humble opinion) would be to ditch the paid podcasting model, allow other organizations to host the TAL podcasts, and thus do away with that nasty bandwidth bill. In three weeks of fundraising, they were able to raise over $110k - more than enough to cover the costs of their 300,000 podcast downloads per week. If bandwidth were provided by others for free, this money could instead go towards TAL's other operating costs - and thus make up for the loss of the iTunes/audible.com revenue stream."
It’s not a bad idea—and one that we’re considering as the media industry as a whole works toward getting better metrics. We’re also watching advances in peer-to-peer technology; at some point, that might be a more plausible alternative for reliable delivery of our content. But these decisions aren’t yours to make.
We want to share This American Life with as many people as possible. But it’s also a very expensive show to produce. In order to offset our costs, we work to attract sponsorships and to develop business partners. Our current contracts are premised on a specific distribution model: namely, a weekly radio broadcast and free podcast, along with a minimally-priced back catalog. Not only do your podcasts make an end-run around this model, but they have the potential to disturb the already-muddy waters of measuring how many people download and listen to our files.
To recap, this is not a cease-and-desist kind of letter. No lawyers were consulted, and we hope there’s no need to involve them. This is simply a request. We acknowledge that our current business model isn’t perfect. But you have to admit that it’s a whole lot better (and to use your words, “nicer and smarter”) than it was 18 months ago. We want to be nice and smart in our practices, and we intend to continue in that direction as we move forward. But for now, this is where we stand, and it’s not going to change in the immediate future. We won’t ask you to stop what you’re doing for your own, personal enjoyment of the show; but hope you understand the reasoning behind our request that you take down the podcast feeds.
Thanks for your consideration.
Daniel
Daniel O. Ash | Vice President | Strategic Communications | Chicago Public Radio
Showing posts with label this american life. Show all posts
Showing posts with label this american life. Show all posts
Sunday, June 17, 2007
Thursday, June 14, 2007
A Takedown Resistant, Unofficial Podcast Feed for "This American Life"
Update Sept 28, 2008:
I get a fair number of hits to this page from people looking for mp3 copies of This American Life episodes.
The short version, is that you can get each episode here: http://audio.thisamericanlife.org/jomamashouse/ismymamashouse/EPISODENUMBER.mp3
The longer explanation can be found here: New location for This American Life Mp3s
The podcast feed that I created, as described in this blog post, was taken down due to a letter sent by This American Life. To read it, go here: An Emotional Blackmail Takedown: Remove The Podcast, Or We Shoot This Puppy
The vanilla feed, which lists the 15 most recent episodes as broadcast by TAL.
A feed of only new episodes, which does not include the reruns as broadcast by TAL.
Please note that this was not done with the permission or consent of NPR, PRI, or the fine folks at This American Life. Show your support, go to the TAL website, and donate 20 bucks.
Introduction
I'm a big fan of the Chicago Public Radio show This American Life (TAL), which is broadcast on many US National Public Radio affiliates nationwide. For some reason, the public radio and TV business (in the US and elsewhere) has not yet figured out this whole Internet thing, and thus many of their online/podcast offerings are less than stellar.
Many young people do not listen to radio anymore. Even when I'm in the US - simply put - if This American Life, Democracy Now, Open Source, Radio Lab and other fantastic radio shows were not available as podcasts - there is no way I'd listen to them. I cannot concentrate on work while listening to an informative radio show, and thus for the most part, streaming them on my computer is just not practical. Instead, they are perfect for the tram ride/walk to work, airplane/bus trips, or walks in the park.
TAL's current business/podcasting model is as follows:
This is sub-optimal for many reasons - the most important of which is that I have no desire to enrich Steve Jobs. When I give money to TAL, it is through a direct donation on their website. I do not wish for Apple, or any other middleman to take 30-50%.
TAL has clearly been struggling to find a business plan that works - and are probably contractually bound by their recently renegotiated contract with Audible.com to not allow their back-catalog to be podcasted for free. As Current.org noted, "[t]he barrier to podcasting for years was the longstanding Audible deal. The vendor sold episodes of TAL for $3.95 a pop, barring the show from offering free downloads."
TAL has also recently had a podcasting fund-drive to pay for their yearly bandwidth bill of $108k. I've given them $20, but I can't figure out why they don't just put all of their content on archive.org (as Democracy Now has done), and thus do away with their bandwidth bill completely. Likewise, TAL is extremely popular amongst many tech geek circles - I am sure that a company or two would step up to the plate and give them free bandwidth if they asked.
I suspect that their unwillingness to let others host their media comes from their desire to somehow find a way to preserve their audible.com/iTunes deal. If they are making more than $108k through paid downloads, then perhaps this is a wise choice. The nicer, and smarter approach (in my humble opinion) would be to ditch the paid podcasting model, allow other organizations to host the TAL podcasts, and thus do away with that nasty bandwidth bill. In three weeks of fundraising, they were able to raise over $110k - more than enough to cover the costs of their 300,000 podcast downloads per week. If bandwidth were provided by others for free, this money could instead go towards TAL's other operating costs - and thus make up for the loss of the iTunes/audible.com revenue stream.
When This American Life first moved from Realaudio to MP3 storage of their show archive, the decision seems to be primarily due to issues with Realplayer - and not because they wished to enable listeners to save copies of shows to their machines. While many listeners petitioned TAL for a podcast feed, the show resisted.
Due to the fact that the episodes were being stored as MP3s, it was quite possible for users to download them to their own computers, and for others to create a podcast RSS feed.
In 2006, Jared Benedict and Jon Udell did just this, and made unofficial This American Life podcast feeds. Soon, links appeared in popular websites such as BoingBoing, and shortly after, the TAL webmaster sent a polite takedown request to both gentlemen. Jared sums it up by stating, "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."
Subsequently, both men took down their podcast feeds.
Last year, I discovered that TAL has all of their mp3s in one directory, amusingly located at http://audio.thisamericanlife.org/jomamashouse/ismymamashouse/episodenum.mp3. Clearly, their webmaster has a sense of humor.
Unfortunately, it is not possible to give itunes/other podcast clients a directory to download mp3 files from, so a podcast RSS feed is necessary. TAL's official podcast feed only has the most current episode available for download - which doesn't help me when I miss a week, or if I want to load up my iPod for a long journey.
I've learned enough about Internet law at this point to know that website owners are within their rights to get angry if you scrape their website on a regular basis. This comes down to a tort claim of trespass to chattels.
While TAL does provide a podcast RSS feed that I could scrape, I thought it best to avoid downloading data from there, if just to provide a bit of legal distance, and avoid any claim that I was hammering their servers.
Yesterday, I announced and made available a script that pulls data from Google's cache of popular RSS feeds. By using that script, I can be sure that I am not directly accessing TAL's webservers, nor am I increasing the load on their servers (assuming of course, that at least a couple other people using Google Reader to keep up to date with TAL episodes).
Regarding copyright - The content of the episodes, show logos, etc are protected by copyright law. However, episode names, broadcast dates and other info are not. It is for this same reason that one cannot copyright tv schedule listings.
The issue of deep linking (i.e. providing a direct link to a mp3 file on TAL's website) is a legal grey area. The case law here is by no means solid. A few years back, A California judged ruled that, "hyperlinking does not itself involve a violation of the Copyright Act" because "no copying is involved." I am fairly confident that I am on firm ground - since, afterall, the content I am linking to is perfectly legal (thus the DeCSS decision shouldn't apply) and accessible by any user who visits the TAL website and uses their embedded flash mp3 player.
With those legal issues dealt with for the most part, I decided to roll my own.
I've setup two unofficial podcast feeds for This American Life.
The vanilla feed, which lists the 15 most recent episodes as broadcast by TAL.
A feed of only new episodes, which does not include the reruns as broadcast by TAL.
Please note that this was not done with the permission or consent of NPR, PRI, or the fine folks at This American Life. Show your support, go to the TAL website, and donate 20 bucks.
I get a fair number of hits to this page from people looking for mp3 copies of This American Life episodes.
The short version, is that you can get each episode here: http://audio.thisamericanlife.
The longer explanation can be found here: New location for This American Life Mp3s
The podcast feed that I created, as described in this blog post, was taken down due to a letter sent by This American Life. To read it, go here: An Emotional Blackmail Takedown: Remove The Podcast, Or We Shoot This Puppy
The vanilla feed, which lists the 15 most recent episodes as broadcast by TAL.
A feed of only new episodes, which does not include the reruns as broadcast by TAL.
Please note that this was not done with the permission or consent of NPR, PRI, or the fine folks at This American Life. Show your support, go to the TAL website, and donate 20 bucks.
Introduction
I'm a big fan of the Chicago Public Radio show This American Life (TAL), which is broadcast on many US National Public Radio affiliates nationwide. For some reason, the public radio and TV business (in the US and elsewhere) has not yet figured out this whole Internet thing, and thus many of their online/podcast offerings are less than stellar.
Many young people do not listen to radio anymore. Even when I'm in the US - simply put - if This American Life, Democracy Now, Open Source, Radio Lab and other fantastic radio shows were not available as podcasts - there is no way I'd listen to them. I cannot concentrate on work while listening to an informative radio show, and thus for the most part, streaming them on my computer is just not practical. Instead, they are perfect for the tram ride/walk to work, airplane/bus trips, or walks in the park.
TAL's current business/podcasting model is as follows:
- The latest episode can be downloaded through a podcast feed for free from their website.
- Archived episodes can be streamed online (via a flash player) on their website but not downloaded.
- Listeners wishing to podcast archived episodes must buy them online - from either Apple's iTunes store, or audible.com for 99 cents
This is sub-optimal for many reasons - the most important of which is that I have no desire to enrich Steve Jobs. When I give money to TAL, it is through a direct donation on their website. I do not wish for Apple, or any other middleman to take 30-50%.
TAL has clearly been struggling to find a business plan that works - and are probably contractually bound by their recently renegotiated contract with Audible.com to not allow their back-catalog to be podcasted for free. As Current.org noted, "[t]he barrier to podcasting for years was the longstanding Audible deal. The vendor sold episodes of TAL for $3.95 a pop, barring the show from offering free downloads."
TAL has also recently had a podcasting fund-drive to pay for their yearly bandwidth bill of $108k. I've given them $20, but I can't figure out why they don't just put all of their content on archive.org (as Democracy Now has done), and thus do away with their bandwidth bill completely. Likewise, TAL is extremely popular amongst many tech geek circles - I am sure that a company or two would step up to the plate and give them free bandwidth if they asked.
I suspect that their unwillingness to let others host their media comes from their desire to somehow find a way to preserve their audible.com/iTunes deal. If they are making more than $108k through paid downloads, then perhaps this is a wise choice. The nicer, and smarter approach (in my humble opinion) would be to ditch the paid podcasting model, allow other organizations to host the TAL podcasts, and thus do away with that nasty bandwidth bill. In three weeks of fundraising, they were able to raise over $110k - more than enough to cover the costs of their 300,000 podcast downloads per week. If bandwidth were provided by others for free, this money could instead go towards TAL's other operating costs - and thus make up for the loss of the iTunes/audible.com revenue stream.
When This American Life first moved from Realaudio to MP3 storage of their show archive, the decision seems to be primarily due to issues with Realplayer - and not because they wished to enable listeners to save copies of shows to their machines. While many listeners petitioned TAL for a podcast feed, the show resisted.
Due to the fact that the episodes were being stored as MP3s, it was quite possible for users to download them to their own computers, and for others to create a podcast RSS feed.
In 2006, Jared Benedict and Jon Udell did just this, and made unofficial This American Life podcast feeds. Soon, links appeared in popular websites such as BoingBoing, and shortly after, the TAL webmaster sent a polite takedown request to both gentlemen. Jared sums it up by stating, "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."
Subsequently, both men took down their podcast feeds.
Last year, I discovered that TAL has all of their mp3s in one directory, amusingly located at http://audio.thisamericanlife.org/jomamashouse/ismymamashouse/episodenum.mp3. Clearly, their webmaster has a sense of humor.
Unfortunately, it is not possible to give itunes/other podcast clients a directory to download mp3 files from, so a podcast RSS feed is necessary. TAL's official podcast feed only has the most current episode available for download - which doesn't help me when I miss a week, or if I want to load up my iPod for a long journey.
I've learned enough about Internet law at this point to know that website owners are within their rights to get angry if you scrape their website on a regular basis. This comes down to a tort claim of trespass to chattels.
While TAL does provide a podcast RSS feed that I could scrape, I thought it best to avoid downloading data from there, if just to provide a bit of legal distance, and avoid any claim that I was hammering their servers.
Yesterday, I announced and made available a script that pulls data from Google's cache of popular RSS feeds. By using that script, I can be sure that I am not directly accessing TAL's webservers, nor am I increasing the load on their servers (assuming of course, that at least a couple other people using Google Reader to keep up to date with TAL episodes).
Regarding copyright - The content of the episodes, show logos, etc are protected by copyright law. However, episode names, broadcast dates and other info are not. It is for this same reason that one cannot copyright tv schedule listings.
The issue of deep linking (i.e. providing a direct link to a mp3 file on TAL's website) is a legal grey area. The case law here is by no means solid. A few years back, A California judged ruled that, "hyperlinking does not itself involve a violation of the Copyright Act" because "no copying is involved." I am fairly confident that I am on firm ground - since, afterall, the content I am linking to is perfectly legal (thus the DeCSS decision shouldn't apply) and accessible by any user who visits the TAL website and uses their embedded flash mp3 player.
With those legal issues dealt with for the most part, I decided to roll my own.
I've setup two unofficial podcast feeds for This American Life.
The vanilla feed, which lists the 15 most recent episodes as broadcast by TAL.
A feed of only new episodes, which does not include the reruns as broadcast by TAL.
Please note that this was not done with the permission or consent of NPR, PRI, or the fine folks at This American Life. Show your support, go to the TAL website, and donate 20 bucks.
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
New location for This American Life Mp3s
Summary: The episodes can be found by going here:
http://audio.thisamericanlife.org/jomamashouse/ismymamashouse/EPISODENUMBER.mp3
Up until mid 2006, This American Life (a popular and awesome radio show on NPR) had "streaming" mp3 files of their archived shows on their website. They had struck a deal with iTunes/Audible.com to sell the shows for download - so they didn't have any great incentive to make free podcasts/.xml feeds available.
Then some enterprising Internet user created an unofficial .xml feed of their archived shows, so that you could download the "streaming" mp3 files to your ipod. It's worth noting of course, that it's almost impossible to make a mp3 file streaming only. All you can do, is make it difficult to download.
And so, for much of 2006, you could either manually download the shows from this address (http://audio.wbez.org/tal/SHOWNUMBER.mp3), which no longer works, or you could use the ultra-nifty unofficial podcast (http://www.redjar.org/radio/tal/archive/).
This American Life's lawyers (or someone there) didn't seem to like this, and sent the podcast guy a cease and desist letter. Stop it, or else. While his unofficial podcast feed went down, their directory structure/naming scheme persisted, and so savvy Internet users were still able to download all the old TAL eposides with a few issues of the "wget" command.
In October of 2006, This American Life announces that they're going to offer free podcasts of their 2 most recent shows. All the old shows will still be available for free, streaming online, or for podcast purchase from the Itunes store/Audible.com
It seemed like a happy compromise.
The only problem was, in the process of doing this, they replaced their streaming mp3 links with a sneaky flash plugin - which made is particularly difficult to figure out where the files are kept - at least by doing a "view source" in the browser...
Today, I wanted to load up my ipod (since I'm flying to New Jersey later) with the TAL episodes that I missed over Xmas... the old method of using 'wget' didn't work, so I fired up wireshark - a packet sniffer - and discovered that TAL has moved to a new directory structure..
I'm happy to share this useful tidbit of info.
This American Life episodes may now be downloaded at http://audio.thisamericanlife.org/jomamashouse/ismymamashouse/
EPISODENUMBER.mp3
Clearly, someone over there has a sense of humor.
http://audio.thisamericanlife.org/jomamashouse/ismymamashouse/EPISODENUMBER.mp3
Up until mid 2006, This American Life (a popular and awesome radio show on NPR) had "streaming" mp3 files of their archived shows on their website. They had struck a deal with iTunes/Audible.com to sell the shows for download - so they didn't have any great incentive to make free podcasts/.xml feeds available.
Then some enterprising Internet user created an unofficial .xml feed of their archived shows, so that you could download the "streaming" mp3 files to your ipod. It's worth noting of course, that it's almost impossible to make a mp3 file streaming only. All you can do, is make it difficult to download.
And so, for much of 2006, you could either manually download the shows from this address (http://audio.wbez.org/tal/SHOWNUMBER.mp3), which no longer works, or you could use the ultra-nifty unofficial podcast (http://www.redjar.org/radio/tal/archive/).
This American Life's lawyers (or someone there) didn't seem to like this, and sent the podcast guy a cease and desist letter. Stop it, or else. While his unofficial podcast feed went down, their directory structure/naming scheme persisted, and so savvy Internet users were still able to download all the old TAL eposides with a few issues of the "wget" command.
In October of 2006, This American Life announces that they're going to offer free podcasts of their 2 most recent shows. All the old shows will still be available for free, streaming online, or for podcast purchase from the Itunes store/Audible.com
It seemed like a happy compromise.
The only problem was, in the process of doing this, they replaced their streaming mp3 links with a sneaky flash plugin - which made is particularly difficult to figure out where the files are kept - at least by doing a "view source" in the browser...
Today, I wanted to load up my ipod (since I'm flying to New Jersey later) with the TAL episodes that I missed over Xmas... the old method of using 'wget' didn't work, so I fired up wireshark - a packet sniffer - and discovered that TAL has moved to a new directory structure..
I'm happy to share this useful tidbit of info.
This American Life episodes may now be downloaded at http://audio.thisamericanlife.org/jomamashouse/ismymamashouse/
EPISODENUMBER.mp3
Clearly, someone over there has a sense of humor.
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