diff --git a/downloader/downloader/main.py b/downloader/downloader/main.py
index b1f9b33..7fe473c 100644
--- a/downloader/downloader/main.py
+++ b/downloader/downloader/main.py
@@ -389,6 +389,11 @@ class SegmentGetter(object):
 	# full timeout is for the entire download and stream to disk.
 	FETCH_HEADERS_TIMEOUTS = 5, 60
 	FETCH_FULL_TIMEOUTS = 15, 240
+	# Overall timeout on the Getter before giving up, to prevent always-failing Getters
+	# from growing without bound and causing resource exhaustion issues.
+	# The longest we've observed in the wild before a segment goes un-fetchable is 7min
+	# or so, to be paranoid we set it to considerably longer than that.
+	GIVE_UP_TIMEOUT = 20 * 60
 
 	def __init__(self, parent_logger, session, base_dir, channel, stream, segment, date):
 		self.logger = parent_logger.getChild("SegmentGetter@{:x}".format(id(self)))
@@ -417,7 +422,8 @@ class SegmentGetter(object):
 			self.done.set()
 
 	def _run(self):
-		self.logger.debug("Getter started")
+		start = monotonic()
+		self.logger.debug("Getter started at {}".format(start))
 		while not self.exists():
 			self.retry = gevent.event.Event()
 			worker = gevent.spawn(self.get_segment)
@@ -426,6 +432,12 @@ class SegmentGetter(object):
 			# If worker has returned, and return value is true, we're done
 			if worker.ready() and worker.value:
 				break
+			# If a large amount of time has elapsed since starting, our URL is stale
+			# anyway so we might as well give up to avoid cpu and disk usage.
+			elapsed = monotonic() - start
+			if elapsed > self.GIVE_UP_TIMEOUT:
+				self.logger.warning("Getter has been running for {}s, giving up as our URL has expired".format(elapsed))
+				break
 			# Create a new session, so we don't reuse a connection from the old session
 			# which had an error / some other issue. This is mostly just out of paranoia.
 			self.session = requests.Session()