Conversation at Supernova today:
Big podcaster: We had over one million people listen to that podcast!
Intel exec: Yeah, we got about 200,000 downloads from people you referred to us. So that was pretty good. Not, you know, millions, but pretty good.
Me: Is there any way you can tell whether people actually listen to a podcast after they’ve downloaded it? [I’m asking because I probably download 6 podcasts for every 1 that I have time to listen to.]
Podcaster: No. ITunes knows, but we don’t. Actually, our flash player has the ability to tell us how much of a podcast you listen to, but that only works if you listen right on the page. If you download it, we can’t track it.
Intel exec: In the future, audio players should just report that back. We can put metadata into the audio files that tells the players to let producers know whenever you’ve listened to their content, or how much of it you’ve listened to.
Me: Some people might get a little upset if you did that kind of reporting.
Intel exec: Well, we’ll just change the copyright to say that if you want to listen to our content, these are the terms. You don’t like the terms, fine, don’t listen to it.
Me: [[speechless… wondering whether this guy really does have the power to rewrite copyright law…]]
[tags]supernova supernova2006 copyright copyfight drm[/tags]
