Blaine here. It's been a while since there were any new releases in this podcast, and I want to explain why that is.
In my day job, I am a teacher. That comes with students running my name through Google to see what they can find about me. I'm not worried about that: I'm old enough and conservative enough that they aren't going to find evidence of me doing anything that might jeopardize my employment or just generally embarrass me. I'm also not attractive enough to have to contend with the student stalkers that some of my female colleagues have to deal with, but that's a subject for an entirely different podcast.
In any event, that's relevant because of what my students found in March. Someone has uploaded audio that I recorded for LibraVox to a website selling audiobooks. Now, LibraVox warns its users that this happens and there is really nothing they can do to stop it. That's part of the LibraVox life. However, whoever did this has followed through to this podcast, and is selling content that I did not choose to share on LibraVox. In fact, one of these recordings showed up in the top ten sellers on that website. Now, I didn't start this podcast to make money, but it does bother me when someone simply takes my work and sells it without even talking to me. I feel that, if someone is selling it, then I am entitled to a cut. Beyond that, they at least need to do me the courtesy of speaking to me about it in advance to get my permission. That did not happen. I tried reporting the issue while at work, and the website gave me an error in the feedback, claiming that submitting information through the website had been blocked by my network administrator. I didn't believe that, but I could no longer access the form at work. When I got home, I first used the feedback form to report an audio glitch that had slipped past me in editing, and the form worked perfectly. When I tried reporting the stolen content, I got the same error. This tells me that the "error" is not an error, but a filtering system designed to give them plausible deniability when they sell stolen content. Clearly, this website housed overseas has no intentions of screening its content.
This experience has left a very sour taste in my mouth. I have not yet decided if I will ever return to this podcast, as much as I love doing it, because of this experience. I don't plan to stop my other active podcasts, so you can still hear me elsewhere. The oldest of my three active podcasts is "Old Time Radio at Bureau 42", where I release public domain radio shows without commentary or editing of any kind. The second oldest podcast I have is "99 Years, 100 Films", in which Trey Hooks and I take a monthly look at a Best Picture Academy Award winning film. This comes out on the 28th of each month. Going chronologically, our next release is going to cover "Terms of Endearment" from 1983. My newest podcast is "Babylon 5: Thirty Years Later", in which Jon M. Wilson and I look at each episode, movie, comic, or tie-in novel for Babylon 5. If it is broadcast content, then we cover it 30 years after the original release in most cases. (We make exceptions for the pilot movie and the direct to video releases that came after "Crusade" so we don't have months of dead air.) We have some bonus content in there, too. That will be near the end of season one when this podcast drops. This podcast is carefully designed to be spoiler free and friendly for first time viewers, because Jon is also a first time viewer.
If you have questions or feedback, you can always send them to [email protected]. Thank you for listening through all of these years.
