Back in the fall there was a major dispute between Podkey.com and Vegan.com in which Podkey was accused of RSS Hijacking. It has taken a long time but it looks like that they have settled there differences. Because I had an account on Podkey that was affected I received the following e-mail today.
Statement Follows:
Based on a dispute between podkey.com and vegan.com and in connection with a settlement agreement between the parties to resolve the dispute between the parties, and to prevent further disputes and misunderstanding – podkey.com is changing it’s terms of service, and removing all registered podkey’s that do not re opt-in to the service and confirm that they understand how the service works and benefits them.
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WARNING: To continue using the service you must “opt-in” within 14 days of this notice
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In the event that you do not opt-in to continue using the service within 14 days your current podkeywords will be redirected to you RSS URL for a period of 90 days from the expiration of the 14 day opt-in period. This 301 redirect will supply the URL pointing to the podcast’s official RSS Feed. After the 90 day redirection period expires the keyword may be reassigned.
What does this mean?
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Failure to opt-in within the 14 day notice period means you risk losing long term usage of your keyword(s). During the 90 day expiration period some users of your keywords may not be able to use those keywords in the same manner they were able to in the past – due to limitations of there software and the nature and limits of 301 redirects.
To continue to use the service you must Electronicly:
A) Accept the new terms of service agreement
B) Create A New Account
C) Validate your Contact Information
D) Stipulate that you understand how the service works
E) Agree to alternative URL’s
F) Agree to alternative RSS Feeds
G) Agree to alternative OPML Listings
H) Agree to alternative Promotion and Indexing Technologies
============ How the service works ============
The Service CREATES AN ALTERNATIVE URL and RSS FEED for the users podcast and creates OPML directory listings for these feeds that may cause this alternative feed to be picked up by other indexes rather than the official RSS Feed Directories such as iTunes and podcasts.yahoo.com
To Opt-back into the service please click link below.
The entire process will take you less than 5 minutes.
Thank You.
marchon
George Lambert.
Closing Thought:
While I continue to think they could have a productive site without the utilization of re-purposing the RSS feed, this is a step in the right direction to get all URL’s pointed at the legitimate domain owners. The only thing this does not go into is if the server is reporting this as a permanent re-direct so that smart applications will update the feed, so that at the end of 90 days the feed does not revert when they close the re-direct.
This is a good lesson for podcasters in understanding the importance of not allowing a third party to control your feed.