Cyprus police have refused to comment on whether they planned to launch an investigation into who was behind the circulation of a graphic pornographic mobile phone video clip aired on state television this week.

The force’s evasiveness contrasts with comments made by Justice Minister Sophocleous Sophocleous, who told the Cyprus Mail yesterday such an investigation was under way, and even went so far as to stress that any person found responsible would face the full brunt of the law.

“It was an unethical, wrongful, impermissible and unacceptable action [to circulate the video clip], which hurts the police force, hurts society and hurts each and every one of us,” said Sophocleous.

The incident highlights the growing ethical issues that are raised by the ease of creating and distributing video over the Internet. (more…)

Podcasts are published by show creators. If they are not publishing the show as a podcast, there may be legal issues that prevent them from doing so, or they may not see a need for it. You may want to give them feedback via their website, so that they know that there is interest in a podcast version of the show.

You may also want to look into to time-shifting video devices and software. For example, Tivo recently announced support for video iPods.

RSS files are text files that contain information about things available on the Internet. For podcasting, RSS files are used to syndicate information about a podcast “channel” (the show as a whole), and also individual podcast episodes.

To subscribe to a podcast, you just need to be able to find the URL for the newsfeed of the podcast that you are interested in, and then copy and paste it into your podcast client, such as iTunes or FireAnt.

The article Understanding RSS News Feeds, at Podcasting News, discusses how to use them for podcasting.

For more detailed information on RSS 2, check the specification.

No. You can subscribe to a video podcast on any major computer platform, including Mac, Windows and Linux.

While audio podcasts are most commonly in the standard MP3 format, video podcasts come in several formats. Because of this, some sites, such as RocketBoom, will publish several feeds, each with a different format of digital video.

You may need to download and install a player to use some types of digital video. For example, Windows users may have to install QuickTime in order to use some video podcasts.

Definition: A video podcast is a collection of digital videos that are enclosed in a podcast newsfeed to make it easy for users to subscribe and receive each episode.

The podcast feed is an RSS 2.0 newsfeed, with enclosures. Each enclosure references an individual episode of the video podcast, and provides the URL of the episode’s digital file.

The video podcast feed URL can be added to a podcast client, and the client should automatically download new episodes as they are published. The videos can then be watched on a computer or copied to other media or devices to be viewed.

The most popular video podcast platform is currently the Apple video iPod. However, many other devices are capable of playing video podcasts.