Norwegian national broadcaster NRK has pulled a series of 212
podcasts each featuring a different song by the Beatles, citing a
breach of its rights agreement. The podcasts would have essentially
constituted giving away the entire Beatles catalog for free.
Although the band's music has not been licensed for the Internet,
NRK announced on Jan. 6 that its 2007 radio series "Our Daily
Beatles" would be made available as a free podcast. Each
installment features the story behind a Beatles track; a version
without music ran as a podcast in 2007.
The broadcaster planned to make all 212 episodes available by the
end of the month, but 14 episodes were briefly made available to
download. It then emerged that NRK's rights agreement with the IFPI
only allows podcasts from shows broadcast in the previous four
weeks.
"The Beatles comes under our agreement with IFPI, which says that
we only can put up shows for download that were aired the latest
four weeks, and where the music is less than 70% of the show's
length," said the statement. "'Our Daily Beatles' aired in 2007, so
we have to pull the podcast. If it was aired today, we could have
podcasted the next four weeks within the agreement We could have
done it, but choose not to."
NRK is in negotiations with the IFPI on a new rights agreement. The
broadcaster does have an agreement with TONO, the Norwegian
composers' and authors' society, allowing it to put relevant
archives online with few limitations.
However, it is questionable whether any blanket agreement would
enable the Beatles' music to be available online, given the absence
of Internet licensing for the band so far.
The Web site Examiner.com posted the following statement from the
Beatles' Apple Corps Ltd.: "It has recently been reported that a
Norwegian broadcasting company, NRK, will make Beatles music
available for download via a series of podcasts. These podcasts are
not authorized by Apple Corps Ltd."
