The company cloning famous podcasts

from our free daily newsletter, the latest from podnews. net with Podscribe. — Look, me and the McDonald's people got this little misunderstanding. See, they're McDonald's. I'm McDonald's. They got the golden arches. Mine is the golden arcs. A new podcast studio, Lightnot Studios, is copying the names and designs of 75 successful history podcasts to confuse listeners and attract ad revenue. It was first spotted over the weekend by Durk from the History of the Germans podcast, who told us, "We all have competition, but if listeners look for my podcast and then stumble on this visual copy instead," they'll be confused and will think it's not worth listening to. Well, legally, it's a little like coming to America's McDonald's restaurant. The law against passing off isn't actually something that copyright or trademark law covers. Since the audio hasn't been copied, it might be tricky to convince individual podcast platforms to take action. The company is based in New York State. It's run by Jaif Farabi, who uses a post office box in East Harlem. Farab's commented on Reddit and is unrepentant. He says, "Fuck you lot because you don't like competition. If your entire business model is being threatened by one person using AI agents, then you need to adapt, otherwise perish. " Well, the company hosts its podcasts on RSS. com and use the company's paid platform to earn revenue from ads inside the podcasts. Lightn publishes short daily podcasts produced by AI to maximize the revenue it can earn. By default, there are two ads placed as pre-roll and post roll. RSS keeps 30% of the revenue. Now, RSS appears to have turned off monetization, but surprisingly, the company hasn't removed most of the podcasts. A spokesperson told us in a statement that they do not support content designed to mislead listeners or infringe the rights of legitimate creators, but also say that we are continuing to assess the remaining shows individually and rights holders and their legal representatives can reach us online. Formal notices, including DMCA submissions, allow for the fastest resolution. Elsewhere, Iran is currently in the news, but even with serious economic hurdles and internet restrictions, there are more than 10. 5 million podcast listeners in the country and more than 9,000 Persian language podcasts as part of our market focus series. And a Dvoodi analyzes the Iranian podcast market, the big hits, how people listen, and how the industry is monetized. The Independent Podcast Awards 2026 is open for entry. It's the fourth year of the awards which have so far attracted more than 1,400 entries. You have until early June to get your entries in, but the sooner the better. You can use code podnews 10 to save on your entry fee. Goldhangers the rest is politics managed to get Ukrainian President Vladimir Zalinski for a full interview. We link to Goldhangers Tom Whiter who explains how it happened. In Vietnam, the president of the national radio broadcaster, Voice of Vietnam, spoke at a workshop focused on podcasting. The National Radio Festival included podcast award categories for the first time and had more than 500 delegates for the podcast seminar. Why do some podcasts feel addictive and others don't? Podcast Sessions magazine looks at the psychology of addictive podcasts. Spotify is going to let you turn videos off throughout the app, including for video podcasts. And in our newsletter today, a lot of talk about some archives, which you'll find at archives. podnews. net. That includes all copies of podcast user magazine from 2006 to 2007. podcaster news from Blueber's Todd Cochran and Podcast Business Journal, the original stories from that website, too. And a disclaimer for you today, I'm an adviser to rss. com, which, as you've heard, has already appeared in a story and is about to appear in another one. It's a Monday, so time for some tech stuff. And congratulations to RSS. com, which has reertified for IAB podcast measurement guidelines version 2. 2. Someone's spoofing our bot's user agent, which is a little odd, and is using our user agent to download shows. We've changed our bot number to version 1. 1. So, if there's anything saying version 1. 0, it's not us until they change it. And the podcast index new feeds report is a new look into the podcast index. At the time of writing, it shows 994 new feeds were added between Saturday and Sunday. 120 of those were spammy or gambling.

Just 25% of those were listed in Apple podcasts. Inception Point AI seems to have produced 132 new shows that day. Shows, not episodes. And in podcast news, why not vote in the web is for Culture Kids for best show, Kids and Family. It's a multiple award-winning podcast and nonprofit organization on a mission to make a multicultural mindset the default for the next generation. and with Andrew Sana. Fourth lane off the charts breaks down three market headlines each episode and what they mean for financial portfolios. And this podcast is sponsored by Podscribe. What are the top podcast shows in March 2026? NPR leads in reach diary of a CEO tops entertainment and top ranking shift across charts. You can explore the Podscribe ranker. You'll find a link in our show notes. And that's the latest from our newsletter. To read all the stories and subscribe for free and fill out the report card, we're at podnews. net.