It seems that the new black is podcasting legal issues. Just a few days ago, the Creative Commons people released a Podcasting Legal Guide, and today Cyber Journalist did the same.
Two weeks ago you couldn’t find podcasting legal advice for all the tea in China and now it’s oozing out of the sidewalk cracks. I smell a bandwagon. How long until we start to see Google ads for ‘podcasting legal advice’? As soon as those appear, the spam emails can’t be far between.
I’m being kind of tongue-in-cheek about this because there are two points to the whole podcasting legal thing that make me pause. First, these two guides (and almost certainly any ones to follow) are American based. I think it’s fairly common knowledge in the world that America is “sue happy”. A great percentage of the law suits that are successfully concluded in America would be considered spurious in other countries and never see the light of day. Second, legal action usually involves the payment of damages which your average podcaster isn’t able to do.
While I’m certainly not advocating jumping into business podcasting with no legal information, I do think that we’re looking at the new hype here. More podcasting legal noise, perhaps the first podcast lawsuit (which will be in the US – mark that prediction!)., and a new industry is born.
Can’t we all just get along?
