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The Podjacker Threat 354

Posted by Zonk from the save-the-children dept.
Schlemphfer writes "As everyone knows by now, podcasting has taken off in a big way. But over the past week, several tech journals and The Daily Source Code have reported on the threat of 'podjacking,' the creation of an alternate RSS feed without the consent of the podcast's owner. I'm the host of a podcast, which has the dubious distinction of being the first widely-publicized victim of a podjacking. To teach others from my experiences I have posted an article entitled Preventing and Surviving a Podjacking (also available in PDF). So far this story has attracted widespread but generally inept media and blogger coverage. This article sets the record straight on what really happened, and shows the simple steps every podcaster should take to protect their shows from podjacking."
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The Podjacker Threat More

The Podjacker Threat

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  • PLEASE, enough with the words! (Score:5, Funny)

    by RPoet ( 20693 ) on Friday December 09, 2005 @12:26PM (#14220909) Journal
    Do we HAVE to invent new contorted words for every variation of everything these days? Podjacking? Webinar? Blogosphere, podosphere? Vlog? Moblogging? I'm in pain here!
  • Podcasting was bad enough, maybe not as bad as blog, blogger, and blogging, but annoying nonetheless. Podjacking now? Gah.

    • Re:*Gnashes Teeth* (Score:5, Funny)

      by xnderxnder ( 626189 ) <<dan> <at> <hindgrindr.com>> on Friday December 09, 2005 @12:33PM (#14220983)
      Hey, it could be worse.. he could have called it podsquatting.

      Eew!
    • I still have no idea what a freaking podcast is and how it is any different than normal streamed audio. Or what a blog is in comparison to a personal daily-updated website. Or what a...

      Seriously... It seems that stupid people decided on stupid terms so that they could express their stupid selves online even though they could have done it before. That's a lot of stupidity. And stupidity is an odd thing: It never gets used up. Maybe its like entropy, is always increasing...

      • Re:*Scratches Head* (Score:2, Informative)

        by Nick_dm ( 580691 )
        Podcasting isn't streamed audio, it's just providing an RSS feed with links to audio files so they can be downloaded automatically by a client, rather than having to actually go to the website.

      • Re:*Scratches Head* (Score:3, Informative)

        by Kelson ( 129150 ) *
        Or what a blog is in comparison to a personal daily-updated website.

        Shorter. Fewer letters to type, fewer syllables to say.

        Do you always refer to the "television set," or do you turn on the "TV" or "telly?" Do you drive a "horseless carriage" or "automobile"... or you you drive a "car?" Do people call your "cellular phone" or do they call your "cell?"

        Same thing.

        As for podcasting, it really is different from streaming audio. It's downloadable audio (or video) that is announced via a subscription system

    • WHAAAAAAAAT (Score:4, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 09, 2005 @12:41PM (#14221056)
      Cant this PODJACKING make sense? how about like CAR JACKING, when someone jacks your car...how about when someone jacks your POD it is called podjacking....and when someone jacks your podcast its PODCASTJACKING

    • Re:*Gnashes Teeth* (Score:5, Funny)

      by Kelson ( 129150 ) * on Friday December 09, 2005 @12:50PM (#14221154) Homepage Journal
      Carjacking. Skyjacking. Podjacking.

      It's official. English is officially jacked up.

  • Easy (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Hey Pope Felcher . . ( 921019 ) on Friday December 09, 2005 @12:28PM (#14220917)
    Why not just let the podcast be distributed, and announce the name of your website at various intervals?

    Not only will this allow the wider distribution of your ramblings, but also help save on bandwidth.
    • Slashdot has been overrun by old people. They know nothing about podcasting, and are so against learning about it, they rile against the word even being considered for a dictionary. Slashdot is now officially overrun by 80 year olds.

      I'm almost part of this group of old people since I'm in my mid-20s, and have never downloaded a podcast via an RSS feed. I don't think I even have an RSS feed reader on my computer, unless Firefox counts some how. I thought it was like live bookmarks for a long time, but I
      • What happened in this case:
        1.) Dude makes podcast
        2.) 2nd dude mirrors podcast RSS file and promotes their own duplicate feed through iTunes and Yahoo and the other 5 zillion podcast directories.
        3.) 2nd dude's podcast gets MORE subscribers
        4.) 2nd dude stops posting new files. The majority of subscribers get no more episodes.
        5.) 1st dude wonders why, stumbles upon his iTunes directory entry which displays the WRONG RSS file.
        6.) 2nd dude asks for money.
        • 7) 1st dude waits for 2nd dude to collect, then sues for damages (all revenue from podcast) and takes 2nd dude's house.

        • Re:Slashdot overrun by old fogies (Score:5, Informative)

          by mzwaterski ( 802371 ) on Friday December 09, 2005 @01:15PM (#14221388)
          You need to re-read.

          1st dude told 2nd dude to stop directing traffic through their URL to 1st dude's site. (Pretty sure it was more of a redirect than a mirror of an RSS file).

          2nd dude complied.

          1st dude realized that iTunes had used 2nd dude's URL for 1st dude's listing.

          1st dude is sad because all iTunes people who signed up with 2nd dude's URL are lost.

          1st dude tells 2nd dude to put URL directing traffic to 1st dude's podcast backup. 2nd dude decides to capitalize and ask for money.

          1st dude not happy.

      • You got moderated high funny, but it seems like you had a legitimate question.

        Podjacking is when someone registers your podcast with the major podcast search engines as coming from their site.

        They then forward the podcast to your show. Maybe. Or maybe they send some other show. Or maybe they offer to let you pay them not to tell your audience that the show has been canceled. Etc. Once they own your show on the major search engines, you're pretty much beholden to them for your audience. Hopefully, the

      • Re:Slashdot overrun by old fogies (Score:5, Informative)

        by Simon Brooke ( 45012 ) * <stillyet@googlemail.com> on Friday December 09, 2005 @01:12PM (#14221355) Homepage Journal
        I don't think many people understand what a podjacking is. Does it mean someone else distributes an identical podcast file as their own, or does it mean they make their own podcast and pretend is comes from another source?

        What has happened here (if I understand it correctly, and someone will correct me if I don't) is that the guy puts up his mp3s at http://myrealserver.dm/podcast/content0001.mp3 and then he creates an RSS file which points to his mp3s at http://myrealsystem.dm/podcast/feed.rss. The RSS file is essentially a signpost: it isn't the content in itself, it just points to the content. Then, when he posts new mp3 content, he updates his RSS. What is supposed to happen is that people point their podcast client at http://myrealsystem.dm/podcast/feed.rss, and every time he posts new content and updates the RSS it's automatically downloaded.

        But what he's complaining is that the 'podjacker', evilpirate, has done is created a new feed, http://evil.pirate/devious/feed.rss which also points to myrealsite's content. The file at http://evil.pirate/devious/feed.rss is automatically updated using something like wget so that whenever myrealsite adds more content, http://evil.pirate/devious/feed.rss gets updated too.

        evilpirate now registers http://evil.pirate/devious/feed.rss with podcast search engines as the authoritative signpost for myrealsite. Users search for content on the search engine, and if they like myrealsite's content, they point their clients at http://evil.pirate/devious/feed.rss.

        So now some - or even most - of myrealsite's users are finding new myrealsite content through evilpirate's signpost. This gives evilpirate the power to alter where the signpost points to, so that instead of getting myrealsite's content they now get rivalsite's content.

    • Re:Easy (Score:2, Insightful)

      by salzbrot ( 314893 )
      If you (and the person who modded you interesting) had read TFA, you knew that this does not help you save bandwidth.

      The podjacker creates a feed that points to your podcast, so the podcast gets downloaded still from _your_ site. Now he gets this feed as the "official" feed for your show listed on iTunes, yahoo etc. At this point, you are at his mercy. So if he decides to delete this feed (as happened in this case), you loose all the subscribers that subscribed via this feed, which is essentially all except

    • Re:Easy (Score:2, Informative)

      by Surt ( 22457 )
      It doesn't help him save on bandwidth because the podjacking site was forwarding the traffic. The problem is: what happens when they _stop_ forwarding the traffic? Suddenly, your audience can't connect to your show. And because you didn't know your audience was reaching you via a redirect, you may not have known you needed to tell people what your shows real address was.

      Plus, do you really want to have to try to explain to your less then optimally technological audience just how to fix their rss feed?

      In

      • Re:Easy (Score:3, Insightful)

        by bitspotter ( 455598 )
        You know, how hard is it to promote your domain name in the stream? Every streaming station I've ever heard may have lost the commercials, but they still plug the website every chance they get. "Podjackers" can jack the feed, sure - but the audio and video content are considerably more difficult to "jack".

        If users have it drilled into their head merciless that the feed can be had from a big bold link on the front page of that domain that guy's incessantly blathering, then when they lose the stream, they'll

  • Apple? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by RPoet ( 20693 )
    Apple has nothing to do with this story, so I don't see why it's filed in the Apple category. Apple did not invent podcasting; they were even late adopters of it.
    • Apple did not invent podcasting; they were even late adopters of it.

      Yeah right . . .

      Next you're gonna tell me that Microsoft didn't invent the web, and that they were late adopters of it.

      Sure buddy, Whatever . . .
    • Apple has at least something to do with it. Most of the listeners that Erik's Dinier lost were iTunes subscribers. The way iTunes handles podcasts makes podjacking rather easy, and the iTunes interface doesn't give a very clear indication that there is a problem with the podcast. I imagine most subscribers just assumed that Erik hadn't released any episodes in a while.

    • Re:Apple? (Score:3, Informative)

      by 1u3hr ( 530656 )
      Apple has nothing to do with this story,

      Did you RTFA? The submitter's big problem is that iTunes (what company owns this?) listed his podcast via the pirate feed. So when that stopped, he lost all his iTunes subscribers, the pirate asked for money to reinstate. iTunes could not change the listing, only delete the old and put up a new one.

  • My precious data. (Score:4, Funny)

    by croddy ( 659025 ) on Friday December 09, 2005 @12:30PM (#14220946)
    It's MINE.

    MY. OWN.

    MY data. My precioussssss....

  • He lost control of his statistics (Score:5, Insightful)

    by wild_berry ( 448019 ) on Friday December 09, 2005 @12:30PM (#14220952) Journal
    His RSS feed was no longer the unique source of downloaders, that's all. The guy had and has many listeners who found access to his podcast through non-sanctioned mirrors of his RSS feed. He thought he controlled the access to his podcast via his RSS feed, but the Internet has lots of redundancy -- without his realising so. Someone else found his material via other means, for which he isn't able to track site visitors, and this upset him. I'm not really sympathetic.

    Perhaps there is mileage in protecting one aggregator of news on the web, but you hardly see Taco complaining that ArsTechnica and Digg find ways to present the same news resources to their readers.

    • Re:He lost control of his statistics (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Surt ( 22457 ) on Friday December 09, 2005 @12:48PM (#14221126) Homepage Journal
      If you read the article, I think you'll find he has a pretty legitimate concern. Imagine if google kept url listings. Which they do:

      http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Awww.yahoo.co m&start=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&rls=o rg.mozilla:en-US:official [google.com]

      Now imagine that they allowed anyone to register a site mapping. For example, maybe I should register www.yahoo.com, and have it forwarded through my domain. Then one day, maybe, I decide that instead of forwarding to the real yahoo site, i'll just redirect all the visitors to my own site. What's to stop me?

      That's the problem with podjacking.
      • He's losing listeners? I don't buy that: the people who want to hear Erik's Diner will make sure that they hear Erik by getting genuine Vegan.com goodness. I still think that this guy is whining about not keeping control of his brand. Blogs and Podcasts need to control their brand, because they are free content consumed by people who read because of their opinions, views and outlook. Positioning is key and a vital part of media-savvy skills. I'm sorry that Erik had to learn that lesson the hard way.
        • Yes, he lost listeners. Or so he says, and I find it quite plausible. The problem is that many in his audience didn't know he was tied to vegan.com as it wasn't something he emphasized on his show, as he didn't know that was necessary. And searches in the main directories are still calling up the podjacker, so anyone trying to re-find his show may still not be able to re-locate him.

      • Honestly, I don't know if I particularly feel for the guy. He went to and signed up with a podcast indexing service when he started his podcasts, with the hopes of boosting his listenership. His listenership was boosted. Now he bitches about loss of control because he went and signed up with the service (who asked nothing from him until he started bitching). Yes, the terms may not have been particularly clearly stated in the beginning. However, when he asked to be removed, he was removed. Exactly as he shou
        • I doubt that the method of indexing was explained in the fine print. When I sign up with an indexing service, such as google, I have an expectation that they are listing my site. The advantage for them is advertising: listeners looking for shows come to their site, and they have a lot of shows if I and others participate in the bargain.

          What I specifically do not expect, is for them to forward listeners to my site through a frame, keeping the bookmarks of my users for my site pointed at google. I expect t
      • This is why it's illegal to deposit checks into someone else's bank account. There were several incidents where people did that until the people at the bank were used to seeing them, and then they withdrew a shitload of money one day without any ID...
      • Actually, it is more like if Yahoo themselves went and registered a redirect to their own site.

        The guy signed up for this *himself*. Then he complained about it when he later realized everyone was using the redirector instead of his "front door" url (wtf???)

        It is like going to tinyurl.com and making a tinyurl for your site, then complaining later on when people use it to access your site instead of the real URL.

        The guy is a fruitcake and shouldn't even be allowed to podcast until he takes a few courses on h

    • Close, but read the full article. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by bigtallmofo ( 695287 ) on Friday December 09, 2005 @12:54PM (#14221191)
      Someone else found his material via other means, for which he isn't able to track site visitors, and this upset him.

      You're right on here, but read a little further in the article and you realize he asked for the listings directly from the "Podjacker"! After he admits this, he says that they didn't do it how he assumed they would have done it. Then he goes on to still label them a "Podjacker".

      I responded to an email somebody sent me about podkeyword.com, and I gave the site a visit and submitted my URL for a few listings. When I launched my show in October of 2004 I went everywhere I could to post its URL, and I quickly forgot all about my five minute visit to podkeyword.

      I guess the only remaining comment I have on this topic is that I'd like the 5 minutes I spent reading the article back. Total waste of time - there literally is nothing to see here.

      • MOD PARENT UP, this guy is a tool (Score:4, Informative)

        by brunes69 ( 86786 ) <slashdot@nOSpam.keirstead.org> on Friday December 09, 2005 @01:06PM (#14221302)
        What a waste of my time.

        No one "jacked" anything, this guy submitted the site to this URl forwarder himself The site that "podjacked" him is no different than cjb.net or tinyurl.com or any other redriector service.

        It is anyone's fault this guy is a complete tool and does not realize what he is doing.

        • The problem is, they made themselves out to be a directory service, not a forwarding service. A directory service maintains pointers to content, rather than forwarding content. That way delisting doesn't impace existing users of the content. TinyURL is in the forwarding business, and they make that clear.

          Furthermore, the 'service' registered his show on legitimate directory services as coming from them. I can't see any way to make that look legitimate. It would be like finding out that tiny url went an
    • You haven't read TFA, have you? What is it with that statistics thingy you mumble about? He could easily retrieve statistics by looking at his webserver log.

      This post is NOT insightful, heck, it's completely wrong with regard to what the article talked about.

  • Same as hotlinking (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 09, 2005 @12:31PM (#14220960)
    Please, for the love of God, stop making up these stupid blog/pod mashup words for insignificant events. Someone made a metadata file that points to your content. This is the same as hotlinking (where someone makes an HTML file that points to your content). Who cares?

    • Re:Same as hotlinking (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Please, for the love of God, stop making up these stupid blog/pod mashup words for insignificant events.

      Please, stop with all the plogsmacking. You are negaposting the webpinionsphere.

  • This is funny (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 09, 2005 @12:32PM (#14220973)
    "I could see at a glance the danger posed by this incorrect listing"

    Yes, imagine the danger of people listening to the wrong inconsequential ramblings of somebody with no life.

    The consequences are beyond words!
  • Step 1: podcast such high-quality content that any hijack attempt substituting lesser quality material will immediately be obvious and detected.

    Step 2: podcast in a distinctive Howard Cosell voice that cannot be duplicated. This with authenticate your podcasts such that any hijacking will immediately be obvious and detected.

    Step 3: there is no Step 3.

  • Lesson (Score:5, Funny)

    by okjeff ( 937565 ) on Friday December 09, 2005 @12:36PM (#14221014) Homepage
    Let this be a lesson to the podcastees: Meat is the greatest thing ever.


  • http://vegan.com.nyud.net:8090/issues/2005/podjack ing.htm [nyud.net]
    Great article, without it I'd never know about the Kobe Beef Show ;)

    We've hired 3 bloggers to start a podcast, and I've looked into the control mechanism to protect our feeds technically. I don't support copyright protection laws so I have to allow others redistribution capability. The author seems to have received many more users from the "hijack" I think I'd support others helping me.

    Just protect your profits by reminding users to visit your webs

  • Never used that method to sign up for the feed (Score:3, Insightful)

    by eltoyoboyo ( 750015 ) on Friday December 09, 2005 @12:37PM (#14221024) Journal
    From TFA the problem was similar to search engine content hijacking, which I have experienced. I have never directly subscribed to a feed in this way. I have always navigated to the home page first and then clicked on the RSS/ATOM/XML link to add to my feed.

    Which is my way of saying that search engines are good, but
    <dons jounalism professor hat>
    you have to check your sources.
    <doffs jounalism professor hat>
  • Search Engine Optimization abusers will try to feed zillions of fake pages containing a specific keyword they're trying to attract, then coaxing the Googles of the world to list their page higher than legitimate sites pertaining to said keyword.

    This is more of the same.

  • about this story that I could find it certainly seems that no podjacking occurred. It seems more like podkeyword is a bad service for people interested in the stats about their audience, but it seems that they did nothing wrong. It seems the creator of the podcast did not understand all the workings of the process and created a great deal of confusion about how his feed was disseminated and then expected others to fix it for him. Perhaps podkeyword could be more clear that they are not publishing your ur

  • Vegan.com podcast? (Score:5, Funny)

    by saskboy ( 600063 ) on Friday December 09, 2005 @12:40PM (#14221047) Homepage Journal
    Sorry, but it has to be said:

    Save a cow...Eat a Vegan!

    -/Karma burning calories

  • Jipahddis, establishing bases in Podjackistan (Score:5, Funny)

    by ScentCone ( 795499 ) on Friday December 09, 2005 @12:40PM (#14221053)
    Enough.

  • The Usage Axiom (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Crash Culligan ( 227354 )

    This could be a variation of the "Law of Unintended Consequences."

    Invent something new. There will be at least one person, each, who:

    1. thinks it's incredibly cool,
    2. thinks it's incredibly overblown,
    3. will try to profit from it by using it, and
    4. will try to profit from it by stealing someone else's work with it.

  • ``Podjacking'' summarized (Score:5, Informative)

    by TrumpetPower! ( 190615 ) <ben@trumpetpower.com> on Friday December 09, 2005 @12:47PM (#14221120) Homepage
    1) Register evilpodjackingdomain.com.
    2) Find somebody else's podcast.
    3) Mirror that podcast's XML file at evilpodjackingdomain.dom/pwn3d.xml
    4) Get evilpodjackingdomain.dom/pwn3d.xml listed in as many podcast directories as possible.
    5) Wait.
    6) Blackmail original podcaster with threats of modifying / removing your local mirror; all subscribers through evilpodjackingdomain.dom/pwn3d.xml would get whatever you want them to get regardless of what the podcaster wants.
    7) Profit.

    Cheers,

    b&

    • Well explained. The guy genuinely does have something to complain about, but this is just the same sort of scuzzy borderline crooked exploit we've seen every time we've had a new technical development - the borderline criminals are quick to get in there and find an exploitable wheeze. Then they rake in some $$$$ and move on to the next scam before the legislators can catch up with them.

  • Recent Father/Slashdotter Conversation (Score:3, Funny)

    by Ranger ( 1783 ) on Friday December 09, 2005 @12:48PM (#14221125) Homepage
    Father:*knock* *knock* Son, I need to use the RSStroom. [djspyhunter.com]

    Slashdotter: **long pause** Go away. I'm busy!

    Father: Open this door right now! You better not be podjacking in there!
  • Podjacking added to the US English Dictionary!

    Bringing you tomorrows news--today!

  • I don't get it (Score:4, Insightful)

    by wampus ( 1932 ) on Friday December 09, 2005 @12:51PM (#14221159)
    So, as I understand this, more people were listening to the podcast, because some aggregator site picked up his feed. Whats the problem here? Read your damn URI at the start and end of the show and be glad you are getting heard.

    If you want absolute control over the content you are creating, start a regular radio station and pay the FCC for a monopoly on your slice of the air. Better hire some IP lawyers and invest heavily in DRM, too.
    • The problem is that the aggregator has no legitimate interest in the forwarding process. That can only serve to give them control over the non technologically adept audience members. Imagine trying to convince everyone who visits your website to check the URL by hand, particularly if it happens to be somewhat long. There's no way you'll get anyone but the 10% most techno oriented members of your audience to do that.
  • "Podjacking" (sic) - Someone has reigstered my Podcast at a directory listing service that points to an unofficial site without my permission!

    Solution: Add a "copyright" tag to the official RSS feed that can be copied by anyone

  • Seems like embedding the official URL in the mp3 metadata would be a good first step in establishing control.

  • Been There (Score:5, Interesting)

    by somethinghollow ( 530478 ) on Friday December 09, 2005 @12:56PM (#14221211) Homepage Journal
    I noticed several sites were ripping off my content from my RSS feeds. Some of them are ad sites that, no doubt, gather like-minded blog posts, publish them on their site, and shit ads all over them. Others seem to be attempting to do some sort of service. What with Google punishing duplicate content posts, I don't want my content redistributed without my permission. So, I implemented a system with mod_rewrite and PHP on my site that checks the user agent before allowing access to any page. If the user agent is unknown, it shows a page saying that I don't know who they are but I'll see about allowing them access to my site. I then enter their user agent in a database, after doing some research, and decide whether to allow them or not. Eventually, I'm going to tie this into my robots.txt file so that it denies robots there (if they bother to look) in addition to showing the robot a access denied page.
     
    It isn't the easiest solution (takes a lot of time to manage) and won't always work (e.g. they set their UA to one that looks like a valid browser or some other UA that I allow), but it clears most of the riffraff, i think.
  • I thought /. was against people getting lawyers involved because they didnt understand the purpose of URLs

  • Just verify referring URL? (Score:4, Informative)

    by hafree ( 307412 ) on Friday December 09, 2005 @12:56PM (#14221214) Homepage
    Why not just verify the referring URL before sending out the Podcast archive? This is how most sites avoid people deep-linking into theirs, or loading high-bandwidth content such as videos or even images from their web servers. This can be done by making your RSS feed dynamically generated by a CGI script, or even just using a htaccess file for the directory containing your podcast.
  • Personally, I'd like to hear the other side to the story from podkeyword.com.

    While I am not calling Erik Marcus a liar, his story is full of opinion and unsubstantiated claims. It seems to me like he subscribed to a listing that would help him publish his podcast, and claims that there was never any notice that his listings would help generate revenue for the listing service. He freely admits that he wasn't really paying attention to what he was doing while he signed up with this service, and so his cla

  • While most of my viewpoint was already iterated by this comment [slashdot.org], I have one more thing to add.

    This is what happens when a very new technology that is highly experimental becomes widespread too fast. People who doen't have a goddamned clue how the web actually works start submitting things to sites left and right, without understanding the consequences of what they are doing. My personal guess is that this bozo did not even know what a URL redirector *was* when he signed up for this service.

    Anyway, I pers

  • This seems identical to the deep linking debate that the web world went through five years ago (or more):

    Is it legal/ethical for someone else to link to your content without your permission?

    An RSS feed is nothing but a collection of hyperlinks (URLs), so "podjacking" is just the deep linking problem in a slightly different form.

    It seems to me that the concensus at the time was that deep linking isn't the nicest thing in the world, but it isn't evil and certainly not illegal. Same goes for "podjacking", I th
  • I am actually really suprised that there is no way to edit the RSS for an entry in the iTMS podcast directory. I ran into this problem through a far less worriesome way. When I initially started my indie rock podcast the setup was less than optimal so after two shows my friend who runs the tech side of our website re-worked the entire site (much for the better) but that meant that my podcast listing in the iTMS was broken. After some emails to Apple I have found that there is no way to effectively take c
  • Podsnatching
    ( P ) Pronunciation Key ( pd - sntch )
    v. podsnatch, podsnatching, podsnatches
    v. tr.


    1. To suddenly take someone's iPod from another's possession: There is a lot of podsnatching on the subway.
    2. To damage an iPod's internal software: Sony's latest rootkit really upset me podsnatching me the way it did.

  • Production vs. Marketing (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Shimmer ( 3036 ) on Friday December 09, 2005 @01:46PM (#14221722) Journal
    This story seems to inadvertently prove that production and marketing are two different skills. The author was good at creating content, but so miserably poor at marketing that he didn't even realize where his audience was coming from. The "podjacker", on the other hand, created nothing, but apparently did an excellent job of marketing the author's content.

    You might argue that the world would be better off without middle men such as marketers, publishers, etc. (I think the catchy phrase for this is "disintermediation".) But this story provides evidence that these people actually do add value in some cases.

  • YAY HYPOCRISY (Score:5, Funny)

    by mdxi ( 3387 ) on Friday December 09, 2005 @02:03PM (#14221898) Homepage
    "Web 2.0!" say the bloggers. "Podcast!" say the bloggers. "RSS/ATOM!" say
    the bloggers. "Down with oppressive media! Democratize publishing!" say the
    bloggers. And now that things are finally becoming standardized, and
    XML-based, and easilly parsable and reusable, it turns out they don't LIKE
    it when someone reuses *their* stuff in a way they didn't envision.

    WHERE IS YOUR PRECIOUS "REMIX CULTURE" NOW?

    Assholes.

  • Mod_rewrite? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by tcdk ( 173945 ) on Friday December 09, 2005 @02:18PM (#14222082) Homepage Journal
    Wouldn't it be fairly easy to make a mod_rewrite rule, that would block the redirects or forward them to a sod-off.html page?

    I've made a few rewrite rules to avoid hotlinking of my images, and this seems possible to me.

  • Podcasting != Apple (Score:3, Insightful)

    by kuzb ( 724081 ) on Friday December 09, 2005 @02:22PM (#14222126)
    Why is any mention of podcasting immediatly associated with Apple? Editors, learn the language. Podcasting does not imply an Apple subject [wikipedia.org] - quit categorizing it as such.

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