I don't understand NPR's concerns at all. How could someone set up a radio station and try to profit off of NPR's feeds, since they are all going to open in a Real Audio player anyway?

Are they worried that people will try to set up fake NPR web sites and ask for pledges or something? Again, as you've pointed out repeatedly, that would be outright fraud and you don't need any special linking policy to cover that.

It just looks like they've done all of this for much the same KPMG folks had their anti-linking policy -- some dumbass lawyer somewhere probably told them it's a standard operating procedure and they've bought into it.