Reply #3: Thanks Ben!

[salvorhardin]

For anyone who cares...

Dear Air America,

I am writing to encourage you to give permission to Ben Burch over at http://www.whiterosesociety.org to archive your programming. Ben has been providing this invaluable service free-of-charge to the entire progressive community for many months now. Allowing Ben to provide archives of your programming will only help increase Air America's exposure.

I understand the enormous complexity of starting up an entire radio network and thus why your own archives may have taken a back seat to more pressing issues. However, Ben is ready to go immediately (at least for Franken, Rhodes and Garofalo). He only needs your permission.

Finally, I would like to address the format your own archives will be provided in. I would hope that you would provide your archives in a more portable format than Real Audio. While it would be nice to see an open-source format such as Ogg Vorbis (.ogg files), MP3 is acceptable as well. I know there are copyright issues to contend with, but providing the archives in a portable format (if not an open one) under a suitable license agreement such as the Artistic License (see http://www.opensource.org/licenses/artistic-license.php) should address most of these issues.

Respectfully yours,