Yes, I feel this will become more of an issue over the next few years as podcasting continues to grow in popularity.
Keep in mind, though, that there's very little you can do to stop people from "stealing" your content if they really want to. Just think about pirated software, etc. If they really want it, they'll get it. Luckily, you'll probably find that the vast majority of your listeners will play by the rules. They are the ones who paid for it, and wouldn't want to give it away for free.
So, right now I'm offering "bonus" content to any viewer who donates money to my Everest podcast. In return for their donation, I create a customized RSS feed as outlined in one of my previous posts:
http://creativecalf.creativecow.net/cgi-bin/new_read_post.cgi?forumid=205&p...
Like I said in the post, you can monitor how many people are subscribed to that feed. I believe FeedBurner tracks the IP addresses of the computers requesting the feed to determine use. Your stats look like this:
OK, so if they were sharing the feed with more than one person (and IP address) then you could see that in your stats, and politely warn them to stop, or cancel their feed.
The feeds that are listed as having zero subscribers simply means that they are not "hitting" their feed, and have already downloaded my content. If you have an ongoing podcast with new episodes being posted it wouldn't give you a stat of zero subscribers unless no one had accessed that feed yet.
I hope that helps!
Good luck!
Jon
TreeLine Productions
Fort Collins, CO USA
Currently producing these popular podcasts:
