More on RSS Hijacking: The Other Point of View

In my last post on RSS Hijacking, the views there are from the point of view of the podcaster. Lisa Vaas, in a followup to her first article, has written another article for eWeek. This time, she writes about the point of view of the alleged hijacker, in this case the Podkey redirection service.

Interestingly, this appears to be a “service” that someone signed up the podcast at question to. Since Erik Marcus’ first request to Podkey was to have the service cancelled, and Podkey complied, there is no longer any contact information available as to who did the registering. Of course, Podkey would prefer us to think that Marcus or his webmaster signed up for the service and then forgot about it. We’ll see how this plays out, but if Podkey can successfully argue that consent was obtained before this alternate feed was created, then the podcaster may have little argument to present. By deleting the contact information for Marcus, Podkey may have deleted the best evidence it needed for its own defense.