WebProNews reporter Jason Miller is at the Podcast and Portable Media Expo and just sent in this report of yesterday's keynote by Leo Laporte. We will have video coverage of Laporte's speech early next week as well.

Jason's article quotes Laporte, "For proper development, podcasting will have to outgrow two things: Apple and Old Media."

There has been quite a bit of controversy centered on Apple's statement that they own the podcast trademark.

I'm interested in your thoughts on the trademark issue and the future of podcasting?

WebProNews Article...

Laporte’s Podcast Agenda: Don’t Screw It Up

Rich Ord
Publisher, WebProNews

For me the whole podcast arena is reason for great excitement (podcasting, streaming media creation and hosting is what the company I'm involved in does) I personally am looking forward to the next few years in growth.

Okay here's some statistics on the issue.
According to Forrester Research, podcasting will reach 12.3 million households by 2010.
No doubt more webmasters will be taking advantage of this new medium as it gains in popularity.

As for the term "podcast" I think it will be here to stay in much the same way as people use a brand of product to describe an item (ie "Thermos" - vacuum flask, "Esky" - cooler).

As for Apple saying they own the trademark - I really don't know how they will protect it, though I can understand some of their concern.
The ipod is effectively their "Baby" that has brought them a nice increase in revenue.
Therefore they obviously want to sell more ipods (plus anything else Apple related including online Mac accounts) and anything that indicates to a customer you should buy an ipod in order to view a podcast is something Apple wants to protect.

A side issue...
Since a "podcast" is viewable by "non ipod" handhelds, computers etc I can just imagine someone coming up with a "PodViewer", "Podscan" or other name - could they then justify their media as a "podcast" too?

I'm wondering if Apple has a problem with companies that provide "podcasting" services or software or is their concern aimed primarily at hardware manufacturers producing "ipod like" players?

Maybe we and manufacturers will adopt other names such as "viewcast"for video and "Audiocast" for sound etc to create a generic description to keep us all out of trouble...

Kind regards from a Mac user.

Here's an interesting article discussing this issue further. en.wikepedia.org/wiki/Netcast

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I was listening to Leo on one of his other pod casts and he mentioned about the legal suit that apple has instututed to ban any one from using podcasting, leo now recommends using "Net Cast" as an alternative to podcast.

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From the Wikipedia site Re podcasting.
"It should also be noted that Netcast is a trademark of Netcast AG, a research firm of Switzerland".

(Let's hope they don't mind...)

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