Podsafe Content - A Guide to Free & Legal Media for Podcasters

Podsafe Origins and Development

Dave Winer's Neologism

"We're in need of some terminology for non-RIAA music, and yesterday I may have come up with one, which I arrived at this way. It's music that's safe to include in a podcast. Safe-to-podcast. Podcast-safe. Podsafe. Podsafe music. Voila?" - Dave's blog post in Scripting News - Saturday, November 13, 2004.

Wikipedia Podsafe Entry

"Podsafe is a term created in the podcasting community to refer to any work which, through its licensing, specifically allows the use of the work in podcasting, regardless of restrictions the same work might have in other realms. For example, a song may be legal to use in podcasts, but may need to be purchased or have royalties paid for over-the-air radio use, television use, and possibly even personal use." - Taken from the introduction - click on link for full entry.

Copyright and Copyleft Issues

Bandfoundry - Copyright and Online Music

Online copyright information center explaining legal rights and practices within the US music industry.

Copyleft and Copyright

An interesting piece by David M. Berry, Marcus McCallion debating some of the issues surrounding the history of copyright, the public domain and copyleft potentials.

NYMusicCopyright.org - Guide to the U.S.Copyright Landscape

Public Knowledge's site dedicated to helping musicians understand the complicated U.S. music copyright landscape.

Wikipedia Copyright

Presents an overall picture of copyright, related topics and web links.

Wikipedia Copyleft

Presents an overall picture of copyleft principles, related topics and web links.

Wikipedia Richard Stallman

Founder of GNU Project and Free Software Foundation.

Legal Information for Podcasters

Podcasting Law

A Zimbio group portal focusing on copyright, trademark, publicity, media, defamation, and legal subjects relating to podcasting.

Tubetorial Videos

Offers a selection of video tutorials including copyright issues for bloggers, blogger law 101, trademark law and your blog domain name.

Podsafe Search Engines

Creative Commons Search

Search for Creative Commons content using Google, Yahoo! Flickr, Blip.tv and Owl music search. Provides the option to find works for commercial purposes or works you can modify, adapt, or build upon.

Exploseek

Automates the process of searching the major search engines for media files. Use phrases and keywords like creative commons, podsafe, public domain, copyleft, etc to find open indexes of legal media files. Do not include quotation marks in searches or things like index of or parent directory.

Open Music Search - Google

A Google Custom Search Engine for finding legal media files and news about Copyleft, Creative Commons and Public Domain works. This tool takes you straight to the heart of the Open Music community. You can also add the search widget to your Google startpage and other Websites.

Podsafe Content Search Swiki

A search engine for finding podsafe resources and works. Use this when you're looking for general information and websites relating to podsafe material and topics. See the link below for adding the search box to your site.

Put a Podsafe Content Search Box on your Site

Add a Podsafe Content searchbox and buzzcloud to your webpage or blog.

Smacki

Allows you to search Google for indexes of mp3 files. Similar to Exploseek and useful for finding Creative Commons licensed works.

Sources of Podsafe Content

Open Media Directory

A clearinghouse for legal, podsafe music and video sources, including Public Domain works, Creative Commons licensed material, Copyleft works and other forms of licensed content. An Ourmedia.org project, this is a good starting point for exploring the wealth of open content sources and grassroots media currently online. Anyone can republish the work under the terms of the CC license and with attrubution.

Music Marketing and Podsafe Content

Beatnik Turtle: Indie Band Survival Guide

Research, articles, stories, and practical know-how about the music industry written from an independent band's perspective. Pretty much covers the whole field of DIY music business survival.

Disquiet: Free as in Netlabel

The proprietors of three established netlabels discuss the cost of free downloads, the online community of uploaders and the transition from physical distribution to virtual; by Marc Weidenbaum.

Download and spread our music for free

Marten Timan co-founder of Simuze and bass-player of We Vs Death, provides insight on why his band release and promote their music downloads using CC-licenses.

Marketing your Music Through Podcasting

Magnatune artist Chris Juergensen shares his tips on self-marketing your music to podcasters. The work may be reprinted with attribution and a link back to the page.

Netlabels and the Adoption of Creative Commons Licensing in the Online Electronic Music Community

The Creative Commons licensing model has enjoyed particularly high adoption rates in the online electronic music community. A growing number of netlabels publish original compositions for free online using Creative Commons' music sharing license. To understand this phenomenon, a history of the electronic music scene is presented that identifies motivating factors. The mechanics of running a netlabel are explained along with a detailed discussion of four reasons why a significant portion of the electronic music scene has aligned itself with the Creative Commons project (Abstract).

PD Information

When U.S. Works Pass Into the Public Domain

A chart and definition by Lolly Gasaway, University of North Carolina. The chart may be freely duplicated or linked to for nonprofit purposes.

Wikipedia: GNU General Public License

Information and links for the widely-used free software license.

Wikipedia: Public Domain Films

Articles about post-1923 theatrical-released films that are in the public domain in the region of original release, the United States, and/or other English-speaking regions. Media may be available on Wikimedia Commons or other sites such as the Internet Archive.

Due to the Copyright Term Extension Act, no more films will automatically enter public domain in the United States until January 1, 2019, when films released in 1923 will be ineligible for copyright (and 1924 films in 2020, 1925 films in 2021, and so on).

Wikipedia: Public domain resources

Intended as a list of only true public domain text resources but provides links to related PD info and useful ways of searching using Google.

What is Open Content?

A Guide to Open Content Licences

Scientists, writers, designers, artists, musicians and others are increasingly interested in making their work available in 'the public domain'. This booklet is an overview of the ways in which this has been done and a guide to the growing area of Open Content Licenses through which people design and safeguard access to their work... more

Wikipedia Open Content

Open content, coined by analogy with "open source" describes any kind of creative work including articles, pictures, audio, and video that is published in a format that explicitly allows the copying of the information. Technically, it is share alike without any prohibitions or otherwise. Content can be either in the public domain or under a license like the Creative Commons License. The term is also used to emphasize content that can be modified by anyone; not exclusively by a closed organization, firm or individual... more

The Free Culture Movement

Free Culture Manifesto

The mission of the Free Culture movement is to build a bottom-up, participatory structure to society and culture, rather than a top-down, closed, proprietary structure. Through the democratizing power of digital technology and the Internet, we can place the tools of creation and distribution, communication and collaboration, teaching and learning into the hands of the common person -- and with a truly active, connected, informed citizenry, injustice and oppression will slowly but surely vanish from the earth... more

Wikipedia: Free Culture Movement

The Free Culture movement is a social movement that promotes the free distribution of creative works on the Internet as well as other mediums, and objects to overly restrictive copyright laws, which members of the movement argue, hinder creativity. Closely associated with the free culture movement are organizations in the free software movement, such as the Free Software Foundation.

Another organization commonly associated with Free Culture is Creative Commons, founded by Lawrence Lessig. Lessig is a law professor at Stanford University and a prominent figure in the free software movement. He wrote a book called Free Culture, which provides many arguments in favour of the free culture movement... more

Useful CC Links

A Spectrum of Rights

A cartoon strip that helps to explain Creative Commons licensing in a clear and friendly way.

ccCreators

A collective for artists using Creative Commons licenses to share opinions, work and start collaborations. Members can use the group to meet other artists, designers, writers, podcasters, filmmakers etc.

Creative Commons

Main website for the nonprofit organization that offers flexible copyright licenses for creative works.

Creative Commons Licenses: Pros and Cons of Each

A guide by Lisa Rein, outlining some of the main points to consider when choosing and using CC licenses.

CcWiki Music Podcasts

A list of music podcasts featuring exclusively CC licensed music.

Content Curators

A list of curators of Creative Commons-licensed content.

Podcasting Legal Guide

Outlines some of the legal issues specific to podcasting and provides links to podcasting resources.

Free Content Browsers

Play and download media

Democracy Player

A free, open source video browser that lets you grab video from web pages and RSS feeds from sources worldwide. You can watch full screen videos from podcasts, video blogs, and BitTorrent feeds, back to back.

FireAnt

Browser and directory for discovering a range of media formats including videoblogs and podcasts.

FLV Player

A simple player for watching .flv format videos (YouTube).

ION

Find, subscribe, and play playlists, podcasts, video blogs, and Flickr feeds, all in one place. ION's integrated search tool also allows you to find syndicated media through services such as Mefeedia, Blip.tv, YouTube, Blogdigger, Yahoo! Video, Flickr, and WebJay.

LittleShoot -- P2P 2.0 -- P2P File Sharing in the Browser

Peer-to-peer file sharing from your browser. Allows you to search sites like YouTube, Flickr and LimeWire. View and listen to media as the files download. Easy file publishing to the network. Integrates with Twitter.

Open Media Network

A free Internet TV viewer that lets you download, watch and listen to educational and public service programs. Provides thousands of programs in DVD-quality video.

Songbird Media Player

An open source cross-platform music browser that can play all the popular music formats including MPEG Audio (mpga), MPEG Layer 3 (mp3), MP4 Audio (mp4a), Ogg Vorbis, Speex, AAC, WMA, FLAC, LPCM, ADPCM, AMR. There's good support for Creative Commons media including ccMixter.