Adam Curry gets podbusted

The true genesis of podcasting has always been disputed in one corner of the blogosphere or another. In general, though, the main names that get the lion's share of the credit are former MTV VJ Adam Curry and blogging pioneer Dave Winer.

In general, Curry has been the poster child for the technology, probably because of his high-profile early career. But now, a flap that exploded in the blogosphere is calling Curry to task for how much credit he's been taking for creating podcasting and for how much credit he's been willing to give.

The kerfuffle stems from a controversy over the Wikipedia article about podcasting. Essentially, Curry is accused of anonymously editing out information in the article that discusses some others' roles in the creation of the technology while at the same time pumping up his own role.

In particular, he was said to have entirely deleted sections of the article, which addressed innovations originally talked about by Technorati principal engineer Kevin Marks.

"At the first Harvard BloggerCon conference," in 2003, the original Wikipedia language began, "Kevin Marks demonstrated a script to download RSS enclosures to iTunes and synchronise them onto an iPod, something Adam Curry had been doing with Radio Userland and Applescript."

But then an anonymous user--who was traced back to Curry via the IP address--deleted the Marks section.

Today, Curry is attempting to sound contrite.

"I edited out the Marks part previously because I never saw a full front-to-back solution that he was credited for," Curry told CNET News.com. "Once I saw the video of the session where he does demo it, after saying he had spoken to me and I had 'challenged' him to create it, I realized I was in error."

Marks isn't entirely sure he buys Curry's apology, though.

"His explanation is a bit confusing," Marks said, remembering how he had showed Curry the script at BloggerCon that year and the so-called challenge. "For him to later say that he didn't remember, it's probably true. But it was one of those things."

Ah, one of those things. Well, Curry has gotten a gigantic amount of attention for helping to create podcasting. And now he's aware he's going to have to deal with a little backlash for the Wikipedia scandal.

"So I eat crow, but I wasn't doing anything evil or posting that I had 'done it all,'" he said. "Merely participating in the process of Wikipedia to the best of my knowledge. Apparently that's not cool if you were a part of history."