"NH Internet Volunteer turned into villian and is fighting to prove he's a victim, and he just may be."
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"RSS Hijacking"
- "Podcast Theft"
- "Extorsion"
- "Podjacking"
- "Demanded Payment"
- "Held for Ransom"
this story has it all
- "Slander"
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"Defimation"
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"Libel"
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Celebrities
- "Adam Curry"
- "Dawn and Drew"
- "Leo Laporte"
- "John Devorak"
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"Dan Briklan"
George Lambert of New Hampshire was an early podcaster, very early certianly in the first 50, now there are claims of over 100,000.
Before podcasting was in the New York Times, George was pondering podcasting, and though about it's future.
He broke the first rule of early podcasting, which was "don't podcast about podcasting" (he says "we all did it")
but infact he was the first call out guest of the #1 ranked Dawn And Drew show
and a little over a week ago, he was called accused of a new word... PODJACKING! or RSS Hijacking.
The story was covered by tech and mainstream press world wide.
and then the bloggers started...
Digg reported podcaster held for ransom by eWeek and they readers suggested "Lets call him, he answered for me..." as they pasted his phone number, to and the harrasing phone calls began.
the emails followed with subject lines that you would not want to read in front of your children, and the messages were worse.
This nightmare was just beginning....
"What a horrible way to find out that you are getting sued!" says George Lambert...
and then..... how does one defend themselves...
What is happening here? we need some background...
In October 2004 Lambert setup a service for podcasters...
A technology before it's time.
- he promoted it to the small number of podcasters including Adam Curry of the "daily source code" the first podcast, and Dawn and Drew.
- it appears that vegan.com may have registered cooking, and a number of other keywords in an attempt to promote there podcast.
- Erik Marcus asks George's service podkey to remove it. (they did)
- Erik Marcus loses 1000 of 1500 users. (because the free service was working in itunes)
- Erik Marcus asked podkey to restore the keywords with conditions.
- podkey replies to Markus no conditions use as is or pay for something custom.
- Erik Marcus claims hijacking and extorion.
- adam curry plays a message from Erik
- the story gains momentum.... PodKey the hijackers
- Podkey speaks with podkey user and national radio celebrity david lawrence of thedavidlawrenceshow.com
- david lawrence (a podkey user) begins demanding that the media hear the other side of the story
- Lambert is on david national radio program
- but the outrage continues... and more pundits voice an optionion many without hearing the facts or contacting podkey.
- podkey user Kevin Devin comes to the defense of podkey and says - he had a similar problem and podkey helped them avoid the entire issue - and was more than pleasant...
- But the vigilante behavior continues.... The Story has teeth....
- PodCasters and Listeners alike are scared... AND THEY SHOULD BE.
below are images and links for more details
The press starts to hear the other side... but it is too late...
and yet the claims continue...
have a look --- it could happen to anyone - Business Owners were warned in Forbes magazine