Tumblr lets you change subdomains easily. If Pitchfork chooses to relinquish the subdomain, the original owner could take it back immediately, regardless of how Tumblr Support acts.
hopefully tumblr will release some sort of official position on it like pitchfork did. and 3.5 months is not very long, but the its not like the posts were actually anything important accorindg to that screen shot. maybe tumblr should add a new feature that shows a message on login to let the user know that their domain may be reclaimed.