I can’t tell you how disappointing it is to read in Wikipedia’s article about what Podsafe means that podcasters are still slavishly following Adam Curry’s lead.

Adam Curry’s effective status as the advocate, role model, and protector of all podcasters led numerous other podcasters to bend the rules in the same ways, using the same arguments.

Despite this, he regularly commented on DSC that, if it is really important for a show not to break any rules, a podcaster should not do the same thing. (To this end, Curry had also advocated the development and use of what is now known as podsafe music, and his production company PodShow created a new site called the Podsafe Music Network.)

Finally, after ages of debate on the subject with industry professionals and members of European parliament, as well as multiple complaints from Dutch music services about violations, Curry decided he’d hit a dead end and that any negotiation in progress with music licensors was futile. This was the reason he gave on 2005 November 7 for committing his show to henceforth being entirely podsafe.

The implications of this move, including the future exclusion of staple segments such as Hit Test, Backtracks, and the regular mashuptown.com tracks, reached further than his own show. Immediately, or soon afterward, all shows on PodShow began to use only podsafe music, if they didn’t already, and a large number of other podcasters followed suit, either in fear that they could no longer get away with what Adam couldn’t, or in simple support of Adam’s decision and of podsafe music.

Umm, are you serious? Adam Curry is the protector of all podcasters? (Wait, are we sure he didn’t write this himself? Nevermind.) It’s just miserable (if this is in fact the case) that two years into the culture, everything having been written up by NYT and adopted by Apple and appropriated by corporation, this is still the public face of podcasting. Yuck.

I was telling Thad yesterday that Project Rockstar, a game where you manage the music careers of bands you create and staff, has me thinking about working creatively, perhaps in music or podcasting, again. But podcasting for me was fun because I threw licensing caution to the wind, something that I knew was semi-sort-of-wrong, as much as I understood it, or wanted to. So research on podsafe music leads to an article which declares Adam Curry as my default legal and moral guide, and then to a company which recommends and licenses podsafe music: a company run by Adam Fucking Curry. There’s no getting away from this guy.

The thing about all this is that, in the year and a half since I played around with the medium, BMI and ASCAP have both put together dirt-cheap licenses ($300 minimum, with a very small percentage of revenue most podcasts will never generate) that podcasters can use to play anything from the almost-infinite playlists that those two groups represent. The best podcast ever, Coverville, has deals with both, and I imagine that the $300+2.5% or whatever isn’t keeping that guy up at night.

What if my podcast only played the thirty-second snippets from the iTunes Music Store? Would that be legal? Would that be interesting to listen to?