Podkey sez: we didn't hijack a podcast

Following up from an earlier story, file this in the "possibly setting the record straight" department. The owner of Podkey (previously referred to as Podkeyword) refutes claims he's a crook. After seeing the specific request made by Vegan podcaster Erik Marcus, I'm inclined to agree. What Erik asked George Lambert (ownder of Podkey) to do wasn't just remove the offending URL. He wanted Lambert to remove the URL, and any keywords necessary from any existing OPML... Which, quite frankly, is a bit unreasonable. Once that gets picked up, George can't very well control it, can he? Unfortunately the damage is done, and now it might not have even been Podkey that "hijacked" the feed to begin with. It might have been the webmaster of Vegan.com or Erik himself that registered the offending keywords and URL with Podkey in the first place. But in the process of removing the original mistaken feed link and keywords, Podkey's owner Lambert can't check to see where that original request came from. Apparently all this was revealed on David Lawrence's show, and is further illuminated on Podkey's blog.

Long story short, we're still looking at a flaw in the system. If someone had maliciously pointed to an incorrect URL, how do you fix that? Podkey is on the hook, but to fix it does require special coding and extra effort. So if it's all true and it's all some big misunderstanding, I for one apologize profusely for calling Podkey such nasty names. I don't tolerate thieves, and the evidence certainly wasn't in Podkey's favor to begin with, but after seeing all the evidence (sans court prodceedings anyway), I'm inclined to agree with Podkey's assertion: "seems like there wasn't malicious intent, more of a communication confusion. But there is a real problem with RSS feeds because anyone can make one and point to your content which messes up your control and tracking, as well as the fact that if the cached version goes down your subscribers don't get your content." I guess it's back to the old innocent until proven guilty schtick, eh?