About a month ago, Cory Doctorow started releasing as a podcast the audio from the class he’s teaching at USC this semester: Pwned: Is Everyone on Campus a Copyright Criminal? (direct feed link here. If you’re a Cory-fanboy like me, this is like mainlining his brain…Cory lecturing and discussing copyright with a smart and interesting group of undergrads. It’s awesome. There were some minor format issues with the RSS feed early on, but things are golden now, and I’m loving it. I’ve listened to #s 9 and 10, and I’m heading back to start at the beginning now.

Another thing…I /really/ dig the format. Which might be a surprise, since it’s (from what I can tell) a single microphone near Cory; his volume is perfect, but the remainder of the class varies from soft to barely audible. But believe it or not, I kinda like it…I’ve been listening to more audio recently that has a sort of ambient feel (recordings I grab at cons, for example), and I really find it pleasant to listen to. It’s very natural. Sure…I miss some of the student comments if I’m not listening carefully, but I grok the context, and you can always rewind if you need to. I don’t know if the format is intentional or not (to give the students some pseudonymity, perhaps), but thumbs up from me either way.