Netcasts?! Forget about it
written by Stuart on October 8th, 2006
Leo Laporte, a man seeming higher than the ISS on the scent of his own self importance is trying to change the way we refer to the non-songs we play on our various audio/visual capable devices. Laporte cites apples recent legal correspondence in relation to it's iPod trademark, and the possible infringement from terms such as 'podcast ready'.
Now, Leo is not alone, some people agree with him, and think that a change in the terminology will aid in reducing the confusion over how to get your hands on all that great stuff listed in the iTS and elsewhere. Reading the comments in various places, I can't help wonder if there was the same argument when the Television was finding it's way into those first few homes, or when the Radio gained a hardcore following. These terms are about as descriptive to the layman as fair play is to Didier Zakora, but is TV a dead medium, and do non-techinally minded folk just not get it?… [more after the break]
The term podcast has been adopted by organisations as large and as cumbersome as the BBC and CNN. Does Laporte really hope that Jeremy Paxman will change his Newsnight closing to mention 'netcasts' to an audience which is slowly getting used to the idea (if not the theory) of syndicated audio and video content?
I can't help think that this is an attempt on Mr Laportes part to enlarge his standing in the podcasting and podcasting aware world. Also, worth noting is that rather than suggesting that we throw off the restraints of copyrighted terms, Laporte has opted to trademark 'netcast', seemingly leaving the door open for the very same hollow argument to roll around in another twelve months.
The celebrity that seems to envelop the podcasting elite has put me off on occasion in the past, and whilst blogging (for the most part) still belongs to the army of people engaging in it, podcasters - at least at the professional level - seems to be trying to dilute the community ethos which made it un-ignorable in the first place. These petty squabbles over the minutia of it all will not open up podcasting to more people, rather it will turn off those people whose support made it so popular in the first place.
Mr Laporte, you are a podcaster. Fishermen are NetCasters, at least they were until you decided to trademark the term. I hope you won't be sending legal documents to the trawler men of the North Sea for an infringement of your mark should enough people be so daft as to follow you in your pointless crusade.
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The sad thing about all this is that it all blew up from Apple’s legal action the other week, with people like Scoble diving in somewhat flippantly.
As Daring Fireball later linked in passing, Apple have to take legal action because MyPodder were trying to get a trademark of their own (‘MyPodder’ and ‘Podcast Ready’) which gets somewhat too close to comfort to their own iPod name. Now whether that’s right or not remains to be seen, but this is not about controlling ‘Podcast’.
That’s like changing “television” to “intervision”. Pffft. *nose high*
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