They published it with an precise link to their email address - what were people supposed to conclude from them publishing it - "never use this pgp key unless you've spoken to me in person?" - that... kinda defeats the whole point of publishing a key _and_ the handle by which it's looked up in the same database. If you didn't want that, you'd associate it with something else that wouldn't expect encrypted email - like a name or a GUID and point people there when they need it.

They wrote in the book "me@foo.com: use key" - and then people did. If he wanted different behaviour, he could have published "someoneelse@foo.com" and then they wouldn't use it to email _him_.