The RSS Blog

News and commentary from the RSS and OPML community.

Susan Mernit: Without some share in the revenue, it's not right to make $$ from anything more than a headline and a digest, unless the blogger has specifically given permission for a great depth to be published off site.

Randy: John replies with two examples.

John Palfrey:

  1. If a for-profit company a) aggregates RSS headlines and digests of feeds only (presumably there's a norm around what is appropriate "digesting", but presume for these purposes it's something well short of a full feed, consistent across all sources aggregated); b) provides an easy mechanism for those who wish to opt-out to opt-out; and c) observes all licenses and other stated preferences of those who offer feeds, then it's OK to make money on the aggregated content with ads served alongside the content in some fashion. 
  2. If a for-profit company aggregates full RSS feeds and makes money from the aggregation, it's not enough to give the source of the feeds some links back or a hat-tip or similar kinds of  non-cash remuneration. 

http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/palfrey/2006/01/18

Randy: This makes perfect sense to me and I think pretty much any honest person would agree. Unfortunately, we're not all honest.

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