Extortionists now have a new type of victim to pick on: podcasters. U.S. podcaster Eric Marcus has fallen prey to a hijacker who has diverted his really simple syndication (RSS) feed and is allegedly demanding money to release it. Marcus, who runs the Vegan.com site and produces the Erik's Diner podcasts, is looking for legal redress.

A podcast is audio content that is distributed to listeners over the Internet through an RSS feed. According to press reports, Marcus discovered that downloads of his podcast had suddenly diminished after he had gradually won an audience of 1,500 regular listeners.
Marcus found that Yahoo has an RSS listing for his podcast on its podcasts.yahoo.com directory, but that the listing directs potential visitors to podkeyword.com rather than to vegan.com. He also discovered that Apple's iTunes online music store associates the podkeyword.com Web address with the Erik's Diner podcast.