Stealing from Howard Stern

Guess this was as predictable as Howard swearing up a blue streak now that he’s out from under the censorious thumb of the FCC: Peer-to-peer pirates are pilfering Stern’s Sirius Satellite Radio broadcasts and offering them to all comers for free.

According to this story in the Los Angeles Times, lawyers from Sirius have been playing Whack-a-mole with the rip-off sites and it’s too early to tell whether the infestation will have any long-term impact on radio network’s flagship programming venture. One of the sites that had been distributing unauthorized audio has posted the cease and desist letter (.pdf) it received from Sirius.

Got to admit that I was a bit of a closet Stern fan when he was doing terrestrial radio; not an everyday listener, mind you, but the occasional guilty pleasure on the way to work. Can’t say that I’ve missed him terribly since his switch over to Sirius, at least not enough to pony up the $12.95.

Won’t be sampling the goods for free, either, as I’ve always been a bit of a hard-ass when it comes to that kind of thing. You can see just a couple examples here and here.