Social Media Café

There is a new initiative afoot to try and bring a new, physical space to the UK, the Social Media Café.

UKPA member Lloyd Davis discusses what it is and how he hopes it will work in the UKPA podcast.

Open Rights Group

Back in April 2006 when the UK Podcasters Association started, we were given advice and support by the Open Rights Group.

As a new organisation, we needed all the help we could get, and ORG gave it. Their intelligence enabled us to go into high-level meetings confidently, fully aware of our rights, and with developed strategies. Since then we have worked with ORG and the EFF to keep podcasting free from bad legislation and heavy-handed regulation.

As ORG celebrates its second birthday, please consider joining, or donating.

Guardian Unlimited Joins UKPA

Another major media corporation has joined the UK Podcasters Association – Guardian Unlimited. At the same time, they have joined the Radio Academy, strongly signifying their further ambitions in the area.

Head of audio Matt Wells said:

“We are now a significant force in quality speech programming, with hundreds of thousands of downloads a week. For the first time, the BBC has a serious rival in this area. It makes sense to have a seat at the top table at the leading radio industry organisation, and also to be a major player in the only body that represents podcast producers in the UK.”

The Guardian’s audio department produces Football Weekly, one of the popular football podcasts in the UK; a daily news show, Newsdesk; Media Talk and other specialist weekly shows, and the award-winning Muslim podcast Islamophonic.

Dean Whitbread, Chair of UKPA, said:

“UKPA is pleased that Guardian Unlimited has joined our organisation, the first major publisher to do so.

With a strong tradition of liberality and independence, Guardian Unlimited considerably adds to our presence and gravitas in the online media rights space. We now represent a truly diverse grouping of professional individuals, companies and media corporations, as well as passionate, unpaid enthusiasts, and our strength is our ability to speak up for all those involved in online media.

Our key roles remain to promote and protect the UK community’s interests across
the fascinating and dynamic emerging online media landscape.”

GCap Media Joins UKPA

Commercial radio giant, GCap Media, operators of radio stations such as Capital Radio, Xfm and Classic FM has joined UK Podcasters Association, in a move that spearheads the radio industry’s integration with digital and online media. GCap is the first radio/media company to join the UKPA, which has been attracting broadcast professionals since it started in April 2006.

The move by GCap Media, who produce more podcasts than any other media company in the UK, is recognition of the role podcasts are playing in the modern media landscape.

Speaking about GCap Media joining the UKPA, Chairman Dean Whitbread said:

“This is a major endorsement of the UKPA’s work and status as the leading body to establish podcasters’ rights. The UKPA represents its members’ interests to regulators and would-be legislators. We’ve done a lot of work to establish podcasting as a medium in itself and we are really pleased to welcome GCap as a prominent member from the radio industry. It shows that they recognise both the value of the Association and the importance of podcasting. This can only be good for all.”

John Hirst, Head of GCap’s podcasting company, Creation, said:

“Over the past three years we have seen millions of consumers subscribing and downloading compelling podcasts from our radio stations and our customers’ websites. We create podcasts for our radio brands, our commercial clients and other third party customers, such as The Sun. It’s now part of our core business and content offering to consumers and commercial customers alike. We are delighted to join the UKPA as it’s a neutral body set-up to support all podcasters.”

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.

WIPO Treaty Kicked Into Long Grass

Breaking News: in Geneva this week, so concerted has been the resistance to the much disliked WIPO Broadcast Treaty in its current form, with even the US delegation finding serious fault with it, that at several points today it looked like the entire treaty would be dropped.

Today, at the last minute, the Chairman decided that so many countries had raised so many different objections, that a diplomatic convention on the Treaty is now to be scheduled in December 2008 – effectively kicking any resolution as far as possible into the long grass and giving time for the restructuring which is clearly necessary if ever consensus is to be reached.

UKPA members and associates once again lobbied hard for this victory for common sense and podcasting.

WIPO Treaty Threatens Podcasting Once Again

Less than one year ago WIPO promised to re-draft its Broadcasting treaty. Member States, mindful of the harm it could cause to citizen media, refused to grant new copyright-like rights to broadcasters and cablecasters. The new draft was issued in May, but contrary to WIPO’s promise – it offers similar exclusive control to big media but offers no protection for internet users.

Please help the cause by signing the petition – it takes virtually no time at all. Beyond that, please write to your MPs. This tactic was really effective in last year’s campaign, especially when you ask your MP to pass on your concerns to the relevant minister.

This campaign is led by the EFF’s excellent Gwen Hinze. She says

“The exceptions are far worse than this time last year – there’s no mention of podcasting, webcasting or netcasting, but broadcasters and cablecasters will get the right to control internet retransmission of anything broadcast or cablecast. Therefore, podcasters won’t receive any rights under the treaty (only traditional broadcasters and cablecasters will), but podcasters are likely to be detrimentally affected by the treaty for a number of reasons. Put simply, from podcasters’ point of view, we are in the same place we were last year, but there’s an even stronger push to try to get the treaty through. If the current treaty draft is accepted by WIPO Member Countries next week, it moves to the next treaty stage – an intergovernmental Diplomatic Conference now scheduled in November.

Since we were so successful at turning around this ship last year with the help of you and your fellow podcasters, we’d like to deliver the same message to WIPO next week: Don’t Break Citizen Broadcasting on the Internet! We have put together a Dear WIPO Petition and would like to ask for your help in getting the word out to podcasters and podcasting organizations to sign on.”

UKPA’s Dean Whitbread says,

“UK podcasts are among the best in the world, enjoying a huge international audience. As well as being a dynamic part of the new digital economy, Podcasting is an important social freedom which empowers citizens, breaks down existing barriers to technology, and adds great richness to our culture.

This inappropriate WIPO legislation is dangerous, and must not be allowed to pass into national law as it stands, or we risk seeing a vibrant industry saddled with restrictions and our individual rights handed wholesale to corporate broadcasters.”

Here’s the petition and more info: http://dearwipo.com/info

Gwen will be at WIPO to deliver it in person there next week.

Here’s the EFF’s background on the Broadcasting Treaty and why it is bad for the internet.

Here’s the latest treaty draft (the Chair’s “non-paper”): http://www.wipo.int/edocs/mdocs/sccr/en/sccr_s2/sccr_s2_paper1.pdf

WRITE TO YOUR MP – remember to write the letter in your own words, explaining how much podcasting is valuable and why the Treaty is a serious threat to what we do. Ask your MP to bring this to the attention of Malcolm Wicks, MP, the UK Science Minister.

UKPA Facebook Group

UKPA members use many of the social networking sites, in particular, LinkedIn and Facebook.

With this in mind, we’ve started a Facebook group which members are free to join.

New Media Age, May 17th 2007

New Media Age: Podcast producers win licence to include full music tracks

We’re starting to get some good press for the AIM agreement which gives UKPA members a preferential rate on their podcast licence. The AIM licence gives access to a 30,000 track archive. Full length no-DRM tracks, for podcasters to use in their music podcasts.

Radio stations typically remove music from their podcasts. This gives UK Podcasters a unique opportunity to re-write the rules for music promotion, opening the door for podcasters to move legitimately into traditional broadcast territory, which will hasten the shift towards media on demand.

The AIM podcast licence covers tracks licensed by the UK independent music industry and includes labels such as V2, XL Recordings, Studio !K7, Cooking Vinyl and Beggars Group. Revenue from the scheme returns to the labels, and artists will be paid as a result of podcasters using their music and paying the licence fee.

If you are a member and you want to get the reduction, contact aimpodcast ->at<- ukpa.info and quote your membership number. If you are not a member, join.