Is PodShow Still Hijacking Podcasts?
Jul 9th, 2006 | By James Lewin | Category: Audio Podcasting, Podcasting Law 
Some podcasters are concerned that PodShow’s updated site may still be “hijacking” podcaster’s feeds.In a post to the Podcasting News forum, David Shapiro (of the Next Big Hit) writes that “Popular non podshow podcasts have rewritten feed links for WMP, Winamp and Realplayer.”
“We never asked for these feeds to be created for Next Big Hit New Music Mix, or Next Big Hit Indie Insider,” adds Shapiro. “We weren’t even aware of their existence until we read the report about the XML feeds on podcasting-news.com.”
The links appear to be provided to streamline listening in various media players.
Earlier in the week, an updated version of the PodShow site was released. At that time, Geek News Central’s Todd Cochrane found that “Podshow has hijacked every listed podcasters RSS Feed, stripped out data and inserted their own info.”
PodShow responded quickly and updated the site, and site founder Adam Curry called the feed hijacking “a silly mistake.”
“There’s only one logical explanation for these links to not be on the Podshow podcast pages, that I can come up with. I think they purposefully intended to rewrite popular feeds in an attempt to gain traffic, and possibly claim an increase in Podshow subscribers,” adds Shapiro. “It seems like Adam Curry and the Podshow Circus Clowns thought that stealing subscribers would be a better way to rip off podcasters, than the podshow contract.”
Requests for a statement from PodShow were referred to Adam Curry’s blog.
Shapiro’s findings about his podcast are posted in the podcasting forum.
