We’ve failed to keep our podcast alive here at the TLF — and I apologize about that — but there are still a lot of good tech policy-related podcasts out there for you to listen to. Here’s a new one that sounds very promising. It’s called the “Intellectual Property Colloquium” podcast, and it’s hosted by the brilliant Doug Lichtman, a professor of law at UCLA Law School.

The first show features a discussion that took place in one of Prof. Lichtman’s classes in which the always-interesting Fred Von Lohmann of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) begins by talking about the controversial Cablevision DVR case and then transitions into copyright law and infringement more generally. Doug jumps into the conversation about 12 minutes and needles Fred with a litany of excellent questions that really get the debate going. Whenever Doug and Fred go at it, it is a real intellectual clash of the titans.

The upcoming shows look just as good. Next up is a debate between Stacey Byrnes of NBC-Universal and Tim Wu of Columbia University about the DMCA notice-and-takedown process. The November show will include Dan Solove talking about “Privacy in a Networked World.” [I am just finishing up his important new book, Understanding Privacy, and I will be posting a review of it here soon.] And the December show is called “Everyone Hates DRM,” and is set to include Ed Felton of Princeton University versus Dean Marks of Warner Brothers. That should be a interesting conversation.

Recently for DRMWatch I commented on the Court of Appeals ruling that Cablevision’s remote digital video recorder service did not directly violated copyright. The Court, however, did raise the possibility of indirect liability.

One possibility–perhaps the most sensible outcome–to avoid further litigation, Cablevision will negotiate a license allowing the new service–and content will offer a reasonable price, because their victory on indirect liability grounds is not by any means assured. Indirect liability depends on their being direct liability, and this takes us back into the realm of the Supreme Court’s decision in Sony-in which the Court ruled that time-shifting was a fair use. This is probably not territory that content is all that anxious to revisit, although Sony does leave them some wiggle room. (There is also a problem in the law… some theories of liability depend on whether the performance is “public” or “private,” and this distinction, while useful enough at a time when the only means to serve a mass market was to serve everybody at the same time from the same copy (a concert played in a crowded theatre, for example), is no longer particularly coherent). At the other end of the possibility range is the stupid outcome. There are no further negotiations; content sues, doesn’t have their heart in proving direct liability, and loses. Every manner of remote copying facility for everything springs into being, undermining not only content production but also Cablevision’s service, licensed or otherwise. And then there is more compulsory licensing, which no one likes. Unlikely? Yes, but stupid enough to be real!

Another recent case worth note is eBay v. Tiffany. Another widely trumpeted victory for the Internet in which the result is not quite so one-sided as a bare recitation of the holding suggests.

Enjoy.