{"id":430,"date":"2006-06-20T15:20:05","date_gmt":"2006-06-20T21:20:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/wp\/?p=430"},"modified":"2006-06-20T15:20:05","modified_gmt":"2006-06-20T21:20:05","slug":"but_officer_the","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/?p=430","title":{"rendered":"But, officer, the door was unlocked"},"content":{"rendered":"

This American Life<\/a>, the popular public radio show, allows you to listen to its programs for free over the web. If you want to own a copy to play offline, you can buy a downloadable file or a podcast for a few bucks through Audible or iTunes or a CD version for a bit more. It’s money that goes to what many would consider a good cause, and, even if it weren’t, This American Life has every right to sell its property in whatever way it wants and for whatever price it chooses. As it explains on its site:<\/p>\n

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This American Life podcasts are available to weekly subscribers at Audible.com. There is a fee for shows delivered via podcasting, the same as other TAL episodes purchased through Audible or the Apple Music Store. These fees provide a small stream of money \u2013 not much, to be sure, but some \u2013 that we split with the show’s contributors. We think it’s fair for them to be compensated for their work.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Recently, apparently, This American Life began to stream its programs in unprotected MP3 format rather than in RealAudio format. It did not, however, change any of its policies. It still charges for file downloads, podcasts and CDs. But because the source files are now unprotected MP3s, it’s possible, with a simple technical trick, to bypass the streamed video and swipe – I believe “swipe” is the right term – the source files without paying for them. Writing recently on his Info World blog, Jon Udell described<\/a> how easy this is:<\/p>\n

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Until about a month ago … I was relying on an mplayer hack to move some of my favorite public radio shows onto my MP3 player. The other week, though, I noticed that although the archive page at This American Life still says that you can’t download files, it’s not true anymore. Last week’s episode, for example, was a rerun of a classic on stories that make us cringe. The offered link is http:\/\/audio.wbez.org\/tal\/182.m3u. If you unpack that you’ll find http:\/\/audio.wbez.org\/tal\/182.mp3. When I noticed this change, I made myself an unofficial TAL feed with enclosures.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In an update to the post, he provided a link to another site, called “Unofficial This American Life Podcast,” which makes swiping the files even easier, by providing direct links for downloading all the underlying MP3s. Nowhere does the owner of this site mention that This American Life charges for downloads.<\/p>\n

Now, Jon Udell is an honorable guy, and I’m sure he doesn’t think of downloading those files as an act of thievery in any way, shape or form. But what kind of strange logic leads someone to say that “although the archive page at This American Life still says that you can’t download files, it’s not true anymore.” That’s like saying that if I go out to the supermarket and leave my front door unlocked, then it’s ok to come into my house and steal my china. Just because something’s not locked up doesn’t mean you can help yourself to it.<\/p>\n

Today, Udell reports<\/a> that he received a request from This American Life to take down his unofficial feed from his site. “You’re violating our copyright,” it said, “and we’re obligated to protect it.” Udell responded by disabling the feed, “at least temporarily.” But he chafed at the request, responding, “I did not post MP3s in violation of your copyright, and would never do such a thing. I simply posted a file that contains links to the MP3s that you have posted on your site.” That may be technically correct, but it seems disingenuous. It would be one thing – and even this would be murky – if This American Life didn’t charge for downloads. But it does.<\/p>\n

In responding to Udell’s post, Ted Roche says it’s “a disturbing idea … that a producer of copyright content could demand you take down links pointing to their content.” But let’s be clear: these aren’t links to the free streams (the “offered links,” as Udell describes them); they’re links specifically created to provide access to products that are sold for a fee. “Aggregation and linkage is the point of the web,” says Roche. “Don’t fight it.” Anyone’s free to criticize This American Life for its business policies. But you’re not free to circumvent those policies just because you don’t like them. If you take someone’s property without paying for it – or even if you help others to do it – you’re breaking the law. Shouldn’t that be as true on the web as off it?<\/p>\n

By the way, I don’t actually own any china, so you’d just be wasting your time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This American Life, the popular public radio show, allows you to listen to its programs for free over the web. If you want to own a copy to play offline, you can buy a downloadable file or a podcast for a few bucks through Audible or iTunes or a CD version for a bit more. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=430"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}