The Podcasting Cause

Our Mission: “The right to podcast your own voice speaking your own words cannot be licensed, and should be a freedom for all in perpetuity.”

Description: The founding principle of this cause is that podcasting, and the freedom to put your own unedited voice online, so long as it isn’t breaking the laws of the land, should be available to all, and is not a licensable commodity.

There is still a lot of confusion in the online rights space with regard to podcasting. UK Podcasters Association has attempted to make more sense of the situation by building and maintaining active links with the licensing bodies, entering into dialogue with UK government and the World Intellectual Property Organisation, and joining with other groups like the EFF internationally to bring about recognition of our basic rights and to resist bad legislation in podcasting.

Why podcasting? Because in many ways, within social media, podcasting is the closest in form to old media, and as such it is likely that lawmakers will seek to bring it under their jurisdiction. How this is done matters – we want to make sure that as business comes into the space, ordinary people can still pick up a recording device, say what they want into it, make a radio or TV-format show (or any recording) of their own devising, and put it online.

Podcasting is for all, and we’d like to keep it that way.

Positions:

• Keep podcasting free, requiring no license from government or other statutory body;
• Establish podcasting as a universal right of citizens everywhere

The above text is in Facebook where if you use that social network – and we advise caution with using Facebook – you might also join the cause. Any donations go towards the UKPA to help us in our non-profit work, or in Facebook, to the EFF who helped us and podcasters everywhere resist bad legislation from WIPO.

UKPA Looking After Your Podcast Rights

The Origins of the UK Podcasters Association.

“Your right to podcast your own voice speaking your own words cannot be licensed, and should be a freedom for all in perpetuity” – UKPA Founding statement, March 2006.

The UK Podcasters Association was formed as a result of a badly phrased press release from MCPS-PRS (the UK Performing Rights Organisations who control music licensing and revenue distribution on behalf of recording companies, publishers, writers and artists) which implied they were about to licence speech-only podcasts.

UK podcasters answered this by forming a non-profit association, which produced this first articulation of podcasters’ inalienable rights.

Since then we’ve attempted to make more sense of the situation by building and maintaining active links with the licensing bodies, entering into dialogue with UK government, and joining with other groups internationally to bring about recognition of our basic rights.

Since April 2007 new members have been joining at around three per week, many of them also belonging to other associations and unions – NUJ, BECTU, Musicians Union, Radio Academy.