Podcasts and Radio Ads

        Will Podcasts kill the radio ads?  This headline appeared in the business section of the Sunday Times, London edition, on August 7th, 2005, written by Paul Durman.  He states that Adam Curry who made the first podcast last year in August is known as the Podfather.  After that first podcast it did not take long for there to be hundreds of amateur talk shows springing up all over the world, including; America, Japan, and Britain.  Mr. Durman starts out writing about how easy it is to skip over commercials in video recordings and the worries of the commercial broadcasters that people will soon learn how to edit commercials out of podcasts.  Some people see podcasting as the end of advertising on the radio, while other people believe it opens up new opportunities for advertising.  Then Mr. Durman switches from radio ads to the ban of music on podcasts because of copyright infringements.  He claims that Apple helped bring podcasting into the mainstream.  However, Apple is also instrumental protect the rights of the recording artists and the record companies.  One alternative is to limit the number of times a song could be played in a podcast.  I know this can be done; I have trial games that have a limited amount of time for the trial.  Apple needs to keep on the right side of the law in this matter or they will go down in history as something worse than Napster.  (241)