About a month ago, Charlie lamented that content licensing is still a bottleneck for Web 2.0 folks (Top Ten Reasons Why Web 2.0 Sucks). One of the reasons that podcasting shot to popularity the way it did is that it is not, nor should it be, mainstream media. Getting caught up in the inability to play today’s top 40 on a podcast suggests otherwise.

The apparent impatience for a licensing solution reinforces our dependency on what some people call “Internet speed”. However, most of the world doesn’t work that way — particularly those parts of the world that have been doing things a certain way for a long time. I don’t think farmers abandoned their horses for expensive tractors when they first rolled off the assembly line; when home computers first became the rage very few homes actually had them; and, it took a long time for the masses to adopt ATMs as a new way of doing business with banks.

The licensing issue will be addressed. The solutions will take time, input and a commitment from stakeholders to work towards a long-term fix that is a win for all involved. Until then, take advantage of the vast pools of quality independent content that can be used without cause for concern about licensing.  If we don’t take care of them, they’ll dry up.