Every time this story comes up, in light of some major setbacks by the U.S. Supreme Court, I get concerned. The set back I'm referring to concerns conservative-activist judges who've weighed pretty heavily against consensus. Should these podcasters have to look over their shoulder every time they create a file for their shows? I don't know -- maybe, if you side with the patent troll on this; thinking these podcasters are trying to get away with something.
Without question, long after podcasting was an accepted and widely used format, the patent trolls started shaking people down. I refer you to a Dallas based company called personal audio, who's leading the charge against podcasters. These guys have been sending cease and desist letters to only the most popular podcasters like Adam Carolla and Marc Maron. Imagine if they were to send these letters to every major podcaster all the way to the little guys who podcast through their phones? How much of personal audio's budget takes a hit? They haven't done that but, which shows that they're only so serious to only go after people who make good money off if it. So Adam Carolla and Marc Maron are right to call it, "...a total cash grab".
— Daniel Kohn (@danielkohn) May 6, 2014
When money is involved, you will always find someone who will do the dirty work for you such as; serving subpoenas, ratting someone out, to kill someone, or extortion where personal audio have succeeded in building their business on shake-downs and currently, exploiting the time it takes for courts to decide anything, while emptying out the artists' pockets along the way. Sometimes (always), I think judges are full of shit. If you're a judge than you can go fuck yourself... until I'm in your court. Is that too harsh? I'm sorry, I don't know how to do this.
Recently Personal Audio went after donor names and got nothing. We're mentioning this because we too will be throwing our hat into the podcast ring and while they won't come after us as they have with Maron/Carolla, shit rolls down hill. It's something we've been talking about for a long time and a year ago we'd already recorded demos, so check those out (excuse the quality. No, really.)
Obviously, we're on the verge of a law that threatens to protect the patent troll because they're persistent in making their case and have spared no expense to do so. Tons of money is being spent on this and that's pretty un-be-fucking-liev-able.