The Podjacker Threat 354
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."
Easy (Score:3, Insightful)
Not only will this allow the wider distribution of your ramblings, but also help save on bandwidth.
Apple? (Score:2, Insightful)
He lost control of his statistics (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Same as hotlinking (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't cry, emo podcaster! (Score:1, Insightful)
Never used that method to sign up for the feed (Score:3, Insightful)
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>
*Scratches Head* (Score:2, Insightful)
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:PLEASE, enough with the words! (Score:2, Insightful)
Well, Podjacking certainly sounds better (to the writer of the linked article anyway) then I'm-a-retard-who-doesn't-understand-how-the-inter
Yeeeesh. No doubt people foolish enough to get sucked into using the word 'podcast' will lap this up like the sheep they are....
Re:He lost control of his statistics (Score:5, Insightful)
http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Awww.yahoo.c
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.
I don't get it (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Easy (Score:2, Insightful)
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 for the few that subscribed directly through your website.
What is even more scary is, he could point his feed to a completely different podcast or download yours, add commercials to it and earn money from your hard work without you even noticing while your listeners think you put the adds in there.
Close, but read the full article. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
embed official URL in mp3 metadata (Score:2, Insightful)
nice article (Score:1, Insightful)
I am hoping that podcasting will put a dent in the mostly monopolized radio and TV markets by offering fresh content from independent sources who don't need to have mucho dinero to start distributing their content. Eventually this freer market will hopefully let the better programming rise to the top...putting pressure on the TV and radio monopolists to get with it! I can't wait for the first show to be migrated from podcast to radio. That would be a newsworthy event.
I like his reference to the Creative Commons and how useful it is in such a situation.
Re:He lost control of his statistics (Score:3, Insightful)
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 that delisting from google will have no impact on existing bookmarks for my site's users, just that new users will not find my site on google.
Furthermore, the indexing service went and registered his show on other search engines, also redirecting through their site, and that definitely wasn't an expected part of the bargain. And now he's having trouble getting his listing corrected with other indexing sites, because they all think the podjacker owns the show.
Re:RTFA (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:MOD PARENT UP, this guy is a tool (Score:3, Insightful)
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 and registered themselves on google as being the source for your website!
Re:PLEASE, enough with the words! (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:PLEASE, enough with the words! (Score:4, Insightful)
I think it's rather amusing to observe these people thinking that they've invented a new medium when it's really just a minor variation on plain old web browsing.
Re:Easy (Score:3, Insightful)
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 know exactly where to go - the source.
Then again, I notice when my radio stream goes offline. I don't notice when a careless feed moves without telling me. It just disappears into the sea of other feed content. Guess you better make content good enough to be missed, huh?
Mod_rewrite? (Score:3, Insightful)
I've made a few rewrite rules to avoid hotlinking of my images, and this seems possible to me.
Podcasting != Apple (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Lesson (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:PLEASE, enough with the words! (Score:3, Insightful)
I think it's rather amusing to observe these people thinking that they've invented a new medium when it's really just a minor variation on plain old web browsing.
Yeah, just like the web was just a minor variation on plain old FTP. Gee, yeah, all they've done is make an existing form of information phenomenally accessible.