PodShow+ problem 'fixed'

A bit of a dust up from the podcast community over PodShow+.  GeekNewsCentral.com's Todd Cochrane started it when he complained that PodShow's directory of programs had "hijacked" his RSS to make it look like his show was owned and distributed by Adam Curry's new venture. 

This is important because without shows being distributed by the producers, there is no way to calculate listener ship - which is important information for advertisers.

"I am now noticing that they have pulled out all the copyright information from my feed and everyone else’s," Cochrane wrote on his blog. "They are doing this with all of our properties this is asking for big trouble."  Quickly, Kris Smith and Michael Geoghegan chimed in with support.

Paul Colligan, a podcast producer, tried to calm the waters saying the PodShow launch had gone badly and wrote "nothing is working right at the site right now."

Looks like Colligan was right.  A check at mid-morning found the PodShow directories included copyright information and pointed to podcasters' own Web sites, rather than PodShow-produced promotional mini-sites.

Curry chimes in, too.

In a podcast about the kerfluffle, Cochrane said he had every expectation things would be fixed.  He said Pod Show made a "conscious effort" to make it appear all pod casts in the directory were part of the PD.  "They wanted it to be a walled garden, he said. “If people weren't sure about Potash's intent to make money off the back of every pod caster, this (was) a clear sign (of) it," he wrote.

Dave Winer, software developer and ROSS architect, added his comments at Scripting.com: "Rose Mary Woods demonstrates how Podshow programmers accidentially erased the link to the real podcast feeds, and instead linked to podshow.com versions of the feeds with copyrights removed."