Publishers bending and breaking podcasting standards

Podcasting technology has been remarkably stable for the past three years. That may be about to change, however. There are now feeds where I am unable to right-click and download an MP3. Instead, some advanced feed reader, such as iTunes, seems to be a requirement. (In some cases, these right-click/download options are still presented -- they just don't seem to work.) There is a danger here that readers such as Google Reader and iTunes become assumed, instead of just nice options. This endangers the loose coupling that made podcasts so powerfully flexible.

Audio podcasts in MP3 format may also start becoming rarer. Today's New York Times has a story stating that "companies have begun distributing media files that stay connected to publishers, giving them a way to track the number of times that advertisements have been viewed, or replace old advertisements." The story gives no details, but I have to believe these companies aren't using MP3 as their audio file formats. Maybe the move applies mostly to the wave of video podcasts now underway. Ad insertion in MP3 files I've already downloaded doesn't seem technically possible. Perhaps the story is confusing audio/video streaming with downloading/podcasting.