Nearly all of the podcasting sites out there today, respect Podcasters and their intellectual property to include, their branding, RSS feeds, direct links to there content, and everything else associated with publishing content on line.
Over the past 18 months we have had one or two circumstances where podcasting sites were not being respectful, and through community pressure corrected their mistakes, these mistakes could have been chalked up to inexperience and nativity. Since then I have been included on multiple site launches, and provided feedback to those that were building sites, and have been through 4 podcast property launches of our own we always stress integrity of the podcasters RSS feed.
Last year Podcast Alley actually got in trouble with podcasters, in that they were doing some funny stuff with RSS feeds in there directory listings, and quickly fixed it. Thus key programmers at podshow have been down the RSS funny business road already, and knew the consequences of doing that again.
So when asked why I am so damn mad, it’s simple. For anyone that is launching a podcasting site of any magnitude today to not be aware and cognizant of issues surrounding RSS feed Hijacking or to deny that they don’t know about the sensitivity of RSS feeds would simply be lying.
Yes I said LYING, I am not going to hold any punches. At this very moment my and thousands of other feeds are being mis-represented and this in my opinion was and is a deliberate act, and to say it was not would in my opinion be cynical. Now that we have that premise down the next question to be asked, is why would anyone do something so stupid?
I don’t know for sure, but I have a pretty good speculation, they don’t want ANYONE leaving there site, the site appears pretty full of advertising, and the pressure to make money may be so great that they cannot afford anyone to leave the site. Thus in my opinion is the reason for the hard to find link to podcasters websites, and our re-purposed Podshow RSS feeds which they have stripped out a bunch of information from our feeds, replacing it with their own raises a walled garden that once your in, you cannot get out.
Additionally those podcasters that have been involved in the Beta Testing and working with Podshow up to this launch who have had access to the beta have done a great dis-service to the entire community buy not calling them to the table.
Someone sent me a e-mail and said I have no right to be critical. Well let me set the record straight I tell it the way it is, and I have never held back from anything that I see as a injustice to the thousands of podcasters worldwide. For me not to stand up and say something would be irresponsible. I am sure the folks at Weblogs Inc and Time and CNN and all of those sites that have had there feeds will be quite pleased as well.
Update: Podshow has corrected the issue and now links go back to the owners feeds.
Lets look at my master feed that resides here at Geek News Central
Now lets look at the feed that Podshow has altered and see everything they stripped and replaced with their info. I’ll let you decide if this was a random decision.
