A Podcast App is Exposing Subscribers-only Shows (theverge.com) 15
The beauty and misery of private RSS feeds. An anonymous reader shares a report: There's only supposed to be one way to hear exclusive podcast content from sports host Scott Wetzel: by paying $5 a month to subscribe to his Patreon. But the show's also been available on a smaller podcasting app for free. In fact, leaked podcast feeds from dozens of subscription-only shows, including Wetzel's and The Last Podcast On The Left, are available to stream through Castbox, a smaller app for both iOS and Android, just by searching for them.
Two people in the podcast space tell me they've reached out to Castbox multiple times, only for the company to remove a show and then have it pop up again, an infuriating cycle for someone trying to charge for their content. "It's a little bit like playing whack-a-mole with them," says one source, who asked to remain anonymous because of their ongoing work in the space. Podcast subscriptions have existed for years, but they've gained wider attention this past month. Apple, which makes the dominant podcasting app, introduced in-app subscriptions with a button that lets people directly subscribe to a show from the app. Spotify announced its own subscription product, too, but with caveats -- the main one being there's no actual in-app button.
Two people in the podcast space tell me they've reached out to Castbox multiple times, only for the company to remove a show and then have it pop up again, an infuriating cycle for someone trying to charge for their content. "It's a little bit like playing whack-a-mole with them," says one source, who asked to remain anonymous because of their ongoing work in the space. Podcast subscriptions have existed for years, but they've gained wider attention this past month. Apple, which makes the dominant podcasting app, introduced in-app subscriptions with a button that lets people directly subscribe to a show from the app. Spotify announced its own subscription product, too, but with caveats -- the main one being there's no actual in-app button.
Its a URL (Score:3)
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I guess I always assumed that for these subscription-based feeds, each user would be given their own URL so they could be revoked if they are shared in violation of the contract terms.
Maybe not.
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Honesty might be a bit much. Give it another few million years and we'll evolve into it.
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RSS itself may be fine. What will happen if it becomes a problem is the audio gets encrypted, kind of the way early cable channels appeared distorted and missing audio on a regular set, and required a box. It doesn't break RSS, just the decoding will be an app with a key required.
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You don't need to encrypt the audio. You just need to protect the URL. It's not hard - HTTP has authentication mechanisms built into it. And over HTTPS, even traditional HTTP Authentication works just fine.
Just require that the user's podcast app support it.
Alternatively, URL encode the authentication into the URL itself, then you can track if anyone is downloading the podcast more than necessary. I mean, most users wouldn't download a new episode more than 3-4 times, so if you see someone downloading it 30
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Sounds like someone needs to hire a competent admin rather than their nephew.
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My torrent and usenet feeds disagree.
someone trying to charge for their content (Score:1)
Any good Podcast ? (Score:1)