Leo Laporte Gives Up on Podcasting

I’ve subscribed to the Daily Giz Wiz for quite a while now – the combination of goofy banter, unloved gadgets, generally silliness, and it’s brevity makes for great podcasting. It’s the only TWIT-family podcast I was still subscribed.

Unfortunately, in today’s – #166 – the new TWIT intro calls it a ‘netcast’.

Lame. What’s a ‘netcast’? Do I need a boat and a body of water?

I heard Laporte’s rational for attempting to change the name at the recent 2006 PodcastExpo – he wants Apple to claim trademark of ‘podcast’. A term and media form developed by the podcast community – not Apple.

Double Lame. Rather than standing up to Apple, supporting the podcast community, simplifying the explanation for new listeners, keeping things simple for existing listeners – Laporte gives up.

Like Dave Winer said about RSS vs Atom: Two is more than twice as bad.

This thing – a multimedia file distributed via an RSS feed – is a podcast.

I’m unsubbing from DGW until it’s called a ‘podcast’ or at least a ‘clambake‘. I can’t support a name change and the software I’m using only understands ‘podcasts’.

RELATED 06 APRIL 2007

” I’m afraid, I can’t have anything to do with Twitter, either. It’s just fueling the confusion [with TWiT].” – Leo Laporte

I completely agree with Tony @ Deep Jive Interests when he says:

“I just don’t see what [leaving Twitter] is going to solve.”

This is another silly publicity stunt from the big twit.

RELATED 09 NOV 2007

“I surrender Twitter. You win.” – Leo Laporte

3 replies on “Leo Laporte Gives Up on Podcasting”

  1. I just listened to the TWiT episode from the expo, and I didn’t hear anything that sounded like Leo was endorsing Apple’s attempts.

    He seems to be advocating a switch to “netcast” as an attempt to dodge legal wranglings with Apple. That doesn’t mean he wants Apple to claim the trademark, though.

    Unless you heard something that wasn’t podcast/netcast/broadcast?

    I agree with you that “netcast” is a non-starter. Trying to explain “podcast” is painful enough.

  2. Mark, dodging Apple is an implicit admittance of their ownership of the word.

    One of the reasons Apple doesn’t yet have a trademark on it is all the other usage (having the word in the dictionary doesn’t help either) – each time someone other than Apple uses the word ‘podcast’, Apple’s claim gets even more tenuous than it is already. That’s why using ‘*cast’ is giving up.

    Russell Shaw has a great overview of the exchange between Apple and the Trademark Office

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