RSS-"hijacking" incident resolved (sort of)

A couple months ago, my client, animal protection activist Erik Marcus, and the proprietor of "Podkeyword.com", George Lambert, quietly settled their dispute over events that were widely reported in the blogosphere after I blogged about it here. Evan Brown, about whom I have only good things to say, represnted Lambert. While I think highly of Evan and I was pleased that Marcus and Lambert were able to settle their dispute without a costly court battle, I have little positive to say about Lambert's actual implementation of promises he made in the parties' settlement agreement. Portions of the agreement itself are confidential, so I am limited in what I can write here. Nevertheless, I can say that the agreement includes two key requirements that are public. First, Marcus and Lambert agreed to post a joint statement prominently on their websites for a period of time. Marcus followed the terms of the settlement by posting the joint statement from a link on his home page in the time specified in the agreement. Lambert has also posted the statement from a link on his site, but his doing so was significantly delayed and his post does not follow the agreement's stated requirement regarding the size of the link. This is of course a small detail, but it was Lambert who proposed the size requirements in the first place which makes me wonder why he's not following his own proposal.

Second, and of greater importance, Lambert agreed to inform his Podkeyword users of Podkey's "terms of service" and to require that users who accept the terms "opt in" to the "service." This part of the settlement was essential to Marcus. Not surprisingly, Lambert ignored his own agreements to complete the opt-in procedure within a specified time period. During the nearly 2-month delay, Lambert's counsel assured me that Lambert was working on implementing the "opt in" requirement, but that he was struggling with the technical aspects of the opt-in scheme.

While Marcus was willing to give Lambert some leeway and we both appreciate his counsel's efforts to keep us informed of the status, I'm frankly tired of waiting for Lambert to complete compliance with his simple and clear obligations. I find it really disconcerting that after two months he still hasn't completed what he originally promised to do in a matter of weeks. Interestingly, during these months -- when he's claimed lack of time and difficulties in the technical implementation of the opt-in scheme -- his Podkeyword-related websites have undergone numerous iterations and redesigns, including one design based "Pivot 1.0" that I visited last week.

I was informed by Lambert's counsel yesterday that Lambert has finally initiated the formal opt-in process, and now I wait, with baited breath, to see if he can conclude that process in the time he promised. I'd like nothing more than to see this matter fully resolved to everyone's satisfaction, but I have to wonder, how much more leeway should Lambert get?

{UPDATE (4/27): Lambert appears to be going forward now with several of the requirements of the opt-in provision. My fingers are crossed that this will be resolved in a matter of days.}