Finding “Podsafe” Content To Include In Your Podcasts.

Finding good content to use in your podcast and individually negotiating permission to use it can be a time-consuming task and may also be daunting if you are unsure if the rights-holder will agree to authorize the use of their content in your podcast.

One way to reduce the time and hassle of individually seeking permission from each rights-holder is to search for Creative Commons licensed material. CC-licensed material is “pre-cleared” for use in accordance with the terms of the applicable Creative Commons license. We explain at section 1.2.2.5 - “You Are Using Creative Commons-Licensed Or 'Podsafe' Content” - about the different types of Creative Commons licenses. Below we explain how you can find and identify CC-licensed content that you may be able to use in your podcast.

Finding CC-Licensed Materials.

Creative Commons licenses are expressed in three formats: the human readable summary of the key terms (Commons Deed); the actual license (Legal Code); and, finally Resource Description Framework metadata that describes the key license elements in machine-readable format.

You can identify Creative Commons licensed content in two ways: either by looking for a human-readable statement that a piece of content is licensed under a Creative Commons license. This can include, for example a statement to the following effect:

“This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/.”

And/or this may be indicated by the use of one of the Creative Commons logos or license buttons, such as our “some rights reserved” button:

Or the CC license buttons:

You can also find Creative Commons licensed content through the customized Yahoo! and Google searches that are available in the “Advanced Search” pages for both search engines. The Yahoo! Advanced search (http://search.yahoo.com/search/options) page clearly illustrates how you can limit your search results to Creative Commons-licensed works. In the Google Advanced Search page (http://www.google.com/advanced_search), by limiting your search according to “Usage Rights”, this will restrict your searching to find CC-licensed materials only.

There are also various content aggregator sites that offer a large amount of Creative Commons licensed works. These are listed at this page: http://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/Content_Curators.

One thing to note about Creative Commons licensed content generally - you should be aware that all of the licenses contain a disclaimer of warranties, so there is no assurance whatsoever that the licensor has all the necessary rights to permit reuse of the licensed work. (Note: this applies to version 2.0 licenses and up; the version 1.0 CC licenses included a warranty of title). The disclaimer means that the licensor is not guaranteeing anything about the work, including that she owns the copyright to it, or that she has cleared any uses of third-party content that her work may be based on or incorporate.

This means that you should satisfy yourself that the person has all the necessary rights to make the work available under a Creative Commons license. You should know that if you are wrong, you could be liable for copyright infringement based on your use of the work.

You should learn about what rights need to be cleared (such as for example publicity rights) and when a fair use or fair dealing defense may be available। It could be that the licensor is relying on the fair use or fair dealing doctrine, but depending on the circumstances, that legal defense may or may not actually protect her (or you). You should educate yourself about the various rights that may be implicated in a copyrighted work, because creative works often incorporate multiple elements such as, for example, underlying stories and characters, recorded sound and song lyrics. If the work contains recognizable third-party content, it may be advisable to independently verify that it has been authorized for reuse under a Creative Commons license.

Reprinted as authorized by Creative Commons License from:

PODCASTING LEGAL GUIDE:

RULES FOR THE REVOLUTION

http://www.vogelelaw.com/index.html

Stanford Center for Internet And Society
http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/

Creative Commons
http://creativecommons.org/

Stanford Center for Internet And Society
http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/

Clinical Program in Cyberlaw
http://cyber.harvard.edu/
Colette Vogele, Esq./Vogele & अस्सोसिअतेस