Hijack Hysteria Hits Podcasting World

Most of the "podcast hijacking" stories center on the unfortunate experience of Erik Marcus. Marcus is an expert on the vegan lifestyle. He's authored Vegan: The New Ethics of Eating, Revised Edition and Meat Market. He owns Vegan.com, a site that features vegan-related news. Marcus also hosts Erik's Diner, a podcast that features vegan news, food ideas, and commentary.

Unfortunately for Marcus, he recently found that another site, Podkeyword.com, was republishing his RSS feeds, and that the URL for the copy of the feeds had been included in several podcast directories, including Yahoo.

Yahoo's podcast search site displays the republished URL from Podkeyword, instead of the correct feed URL, http://vegan.com/wordpress/wp-rss2.php:

Podkeywords is a site that republishes podcast feeds, using keywords in the URL. This was announced as a service to podcasters in the Yahoo iPodder-dev group in October of 2004. For example, a podcaster with a poker podcast could republish their feed as poker.podkeyword.com.

While this service offers the potential benefit of having an easy-to-remember podcast feed name, it also poses the risk of confusion over what the correct URL is for a podcast.

According to Marcus, he's contacted Yahoo repeatedly to get the entry changed from the Podkeyword URL for his feed to his own, but Yahoo hasn't responded.

Dealing with Internet Copyright Infringement

When a podcaster publishes their work, they generally have the right to control how and where it is reproduced. If a podcaster's content is republished at another site, the podcast has not been hacked, the podcast feed URL has not been redirected and the podcaster's audience hasn't been stolen. The podcaster's content has just been reproduced at another site, with or without the podcaster's permission.

While Marcus's situation is unfortunate, it doesn't represent a unique vulnerability to podcasting or RSS. Podcast feeds, like any other type of content that is shared over the Internet, can be copied and reproduced both legally and illegally.

In Marcus case, it's not clear that his podcast feed was being reproduced without his permission. It's just as likely that this was a case of misunderstanding about the nature of the Podkeyword service. If a podcast is being reproduced without the owner's permission, though, there are ways to deal with the situation.

According the the US Copyright Office, "Copyright protection subsists from the time the work is created in fixed form. The copyright in the work of authorship immediately becomes the property of the author who created the work. Only the author or those deriving their rights through the author can rightfully claim copyright."

While copyright infringement is common on the Internet, the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) of 1998, provides one way to deal with it. According to The UCLA Online Institute for Cyberspace Law and Policy, the DMCA "limits Internet service providers from copyright infringement liability for simply transmitting information over the Internet. Service providers, however, are expected to remove material from users' web sites that appears to constitute copyright infringement."

RSS files are designed to make syndication and aggregation easy - not wholesale copying. Podcasters that find another site has republished their feed without their permission can ask the offending site owner to remove the copy. If that doesn't take care of the problem, podcasters can deal with the problem by contacting the site's Internet service provider.

The notice to the service provider of infringement must be given to the service provider's designated agent and must contain the following information:

1. A physical or electronic signature of a person whoi is authorized to act on behalf of the copyright owner.
2. Identification of the copyrighted work or works claimed to have been infringed.
3. Identification of the infringing material, to permit the service provider to locate the material.
4. Information reasonably sufficient to permit the service provider to contact the complaining party.
5. A statement that the complaining party believes that use of the material is unauthorized.
6. A statement that the information in the notice is accurate and that the complaining party is acting on the copyright owner.

Additional information is provided at the Keytlaw site.

On receiving a proper notice of alleged copyright infringement, most ISPs will promptly remove or block access to the infringing material. Follow up with the ISP to make sure it complies with its obligations after receiving the notice.

Anyone that experienced Internet copyright infringement should document the infringing copy at the offending site and contact a lawyer to ensure that their rights are protected. Reasonable site owners will promptly deal with any claims of infringement; there are laws in place to deal with unreasonable site owners.