After 5 years, 10 months and 2 days of co-hosting, I will be leaving the Copyright 2.0 Show on September 12, when episode 342 is released. We announced my departure on episode 340, which was released yesterday. I joined the show officially on November 10, 2008 for episode 84.

On 259 occasions, I will have sat down with Jonathan Bailey for an hour to talk about the latest copyright news. It’s been an amazing run and I wanted to take a moment to reflect on it.

Jonathan Bailey

In 2006 (I think), I found Jonathan’s blog, Plagiarism Today. It was (and is) a tremendous resource for anyone who has had their work taken and used without their permission. That is what drew me to it. Jonathan has always been very giving of his time. If you email him a question and ask for help, he’ll help you for free. Even though he’s a consultant and he literally does this work to survive, he’ll help you for free. He’s a great guy.

We first connected meaningfully on January 4, 2007. I emailed him to ask if he’d be a guest on the podcast I hosted, The Community Admin Show. He agreed.

On January 9, just 5 days after I had first emailed him about being on the show, I had something else for him. I discovered a new search engine, Omgili, that was scraping content from my forums and placing ads around it. They called this a “discussion preview,” which was pretty ridiculous. I shot Jonathan an email about it. I didn’t ask him to do anything, I just thought he’d be interested in it.

Bam, 2 days later, he writes an article about it on his blog. Jonathan is not afraid to be openly critical of someone who is jacking someone else’s content. He does it in a professional, credible way – not in a childish way. He tries to get all sides of the story. He doesn’t use personal attacks, he facts and research. This makes him the bad guy sometimes, but that’s what happens when you care.

Every time I emailed him, he’d take the time to write detailed, thoughtful replies. He still does this.

How I Ended Up Hosting a Copyright Podcast

And so, we got to know each other. We exchanged many emails, we met in person at a conference, he reviewed the copyright related contents of my book and so on. On October 22, 2008, I sent him a story idea and, in response, he asked me if I was interested in co-hosting the show. I agreed.

I am more copyright savvy than most people out there, but I would never refer to myself as a copyright expert. That’s what Jonathan is. I’m definitely not that. So I didn’t bring that value to the show. If you asked me what I contributed, I think it would be three things:

1. A savvy, outsider perspective.
2. An ability to draw details out of Jonathan and get deeper into stories.
3. Humor.

I believe that what I brought to the show was sort of an outsider perspective. I’m not part of the copyright professional world. I’m not constrained by case law. I can simply talk about how I think it could or should be. Right or wrong, though Jonathan and I generally agree, I think that helped bring a little variety to the show’s viewpoint.

I feel like I have been able to extract a lot of details out of Jonathan by asking questions from the layman’s point of view. I also brought humor and levity to the show, which is based on a fairly boring topic by conventional standards (Jonathan would agree with that statement). We laugh a lot for a copyright show.

Highlights

It’s funny because the specifics that you remember about a show like this aren’t necessarily your favorite memories. My favorite memories are just me and Jonathan having fun on the show. But that all blends together. With that in mind, there are a few moments that stand out to me.

On episode 149, we talked about the content scraping that was being performed by Global Grind, a story I covered in detail here on my blog. The article I wrote became the catalyst for a ton of discussion online. It put pressure on Global Grind and they changed. We brought it to the podcast and had the most active, engaged chat room of any episode that we ever hosted. It was great.

On episode 200, we had an assortment of guests but, through a friend, we connected with Dave Tognotti, the Vice President of Operations and General Counsel at Monster Products. I really enjoyed that conversation and feel like it was one of the best guest moments in the history of the show.

At South by Southwest Interactive 2012, Jonathan and I participated in a panel discussion together, which was a lot of fun.

The Greatest Thing I Gained From Hosting the Show

Far and away, what I value most from my time on the show is my friendship with Jonathan. Before we started doing the podcast together, we were friends in a loose, general sense. But over the last 6 years, Jonathan has become a close friend. I take that friendship with me and look forward to it growing further.

What I will miss most about the show is sitting down every week with my friend and having a laugh.

Why I’m Leaving

When you have invested so much time into something, it is very hard to leave it behind. It becomes a part of your life. Unfortunately, everything eventually comes to an end.

In this case, it has a lot to do with me being hungry for change. In order to free myself up for that change, I carefully reviewed all of the projects that I was committed to and cut approximately 80% of them. I thought about my involvement in the Copyright 2.0 Show for several months, as I wanted to make the right decision.

Though I do have fun hosting the show, I decided that it just wasn’t pushing me forward personally or professionally. There is value in being informed on current copyright news and in spending time with Jonathan. But I don’t need the podcast to speak with Jonathan, and I can’t see myself working in the copyright industry. It was a hard choice, but it’ll free me up a little more and help me focus.

Thank You

I would to thank everyone who has supported the Copyright 2.0 Show during my time on it. Thank you to everyone who has been in the chat room, who has helped to spread the word or left a kind comment.

Thank you to Jonathan for inviting me to join the show and for being my friend. Thank you to Chris Matthieu, who launched the show originally, for your kindness and support.

The Copyright 2.0 Show will continue and Jonathan plans to make it bigger and better than ever before. I’m sure I’ll pop up on it again.