-
Website
http://www.scobleizer.com/ -
Original page
http://scobleizer.com/2006/11/03/andy-says-im-an-rss-stealer-thanks-to-google-reader/ -
Subscribe
All Comments -
Community
-
-
Top Commenters
-
Popular Threads
All Comments
It would be very easy for Google to implement a standard, such that content, if the owner wished, could remain private.
There are no rules forcing you to adopt a CC policy for your RSS feeds, in fact many feeds are specifically copywrite.
Google provide no ststistics to Feedburner, and I have seen many subscription numbers decrease from the use of Google Reader.
In addition Google effectively allows you to refeed the content elsewhere. Who is going to block Google from picking up their content?
This invalidates any attempt you might attempt to block rogue crawlers.
I am sure there are alternative ways to implement this, and I believe need to be aware of the dangers in sharing content they are not authorised to share.
RSS does not have to be purely about public uses
If you want something to be private you need to lock it down on your server and give everyone you want to have access to it a password.
By the way, my feed is copyrighted too. But I know that participation in the RSS system requires letting other people use my feed for non commercial uses (and, in some cases, like Bloglines, even a little bit of commercialism).
If you don't like that, it's very easy to opt out. Just send me an email and I'll stop reading your feed.
Before anyone says "but you can just post an entry and that says "blah says this" and a link", I mean a quick and automated way so that the middle man, Scoble in this instance, doesn't have to use any brain power to exercise and the original authors point of view is not lost in translation.
I've got to say how deeply, deeply disappointed I am that you've decided to do this. Your republishing full feeds on your link blog, and without permission up front, is a breach of copyright, and for that matter the DMCA as well, no matter the fact that you promise to take them down if asked. What you've just done is given a green light to the thousands of spam bloggers out there who doing the same thing, the same people I and many others from content creating companies fight day in, day out. I can see some of the responses now: "well Robert Scoble is doing it". I've heard the whole "but I'm helping you, I'm helping you drive traffic to your site" argument you are using before: it's a standard defense of a spam blogger. I notice you argue that your not always republishing the full feed, but certainly with the feeds that your using that actually publish full feeds, you are indeed reposting them. And one last thing: remember the whole debate you championed in relation to publishing full feeds, indeed you actually stopped reading blogs with part feeds: well since you're now essentially publishing a spam blog, you might well now understand my previous position against you on the matter, because it's sites such as these that force people to go down the part feed route. I suppose I can only ask: please reconsider!
And, if you think my link blog is the same thing as a splog then you aren't rational.
When I say I'm not reposting the full feed, please be clear. Out of, say, 20 items on a blog, I probably only post one or two. A splogger will republish every single one and sploggers make it difficult to figure out where the content came from. My link blog is TOTALLY DIFFERENT.
It's easy to keep people from viewing your RSS feed, if you want to keep it private. Just lock down your server to allow only certain people to have access. I don't get what the big deal is. If you want to share something only with a small group of people, seems to me that email is a far better protocol.
Can you point to one of the offending items - I don't want to go off half cocked without seeing the actual copy, and the orignal
1. Please forgive the typos / spelling errors - I am in the middle of "crunch time" on several major projects, and just blogging between chat sessions with my programmers.
2.
Why do you have this in your sidebar?
Does that mean it is ok to share other people's full feeds to the world, but not your own?
Don't you think it is too easy to make a mistake with the wrong feed? Do you conciously know which feeds you read (maybe Duncans) that are copyright, and which are under a CC?
There are major problems with deliverability of email, and you can't embed content as easily.
RSS could be the solution if we let it.
I have just registered a new domain name
tech-splog.com
I haven't done anything with it yet.
What I could easily do is take your linkblog and rework it.
I would then take quite a few others.
I would then accidentally add a few "friends" blogs that contain content with affiliate links and advertising.
Obviously I would prevent search engines indexing the site.
I would then get the people whose commercial feeds I use to link to it, or maybe even refeed excerpts from my splog.
Obviously I would make the site useful, with heavy use of folksonomy so people could actually find content.
None of my own personal advertising, but maybe I would include the occasional relevant post from my own blogs.
By your current definition of what is right and propper, my splog would actually be totally legal, ethical, and even worthy of daily promotion on a high traffic blog.
It should also be noted that Google is the only Feed Reader that allows refeeding of shared content. Every other service I have looked at only allows reading of the content.
>>Do you conciously know which feeds you read (maybe Duncans) that are copyright, and which are under a CC?
Again. ALL FEEDS ARE FAIR GAME TO HAVE SOME POSTS REPRINTED. If they don't want me to repost SOME of their posts (I don't do all, which is what separates me from a splogger -- my use is covered under fair use) then you can ask me to stop doing it, and I will. I'll just remove you from my reading behavior and that'll be the end of it.
>RSS could be the solution if we let it.
That's not RSS. That'll be RSS with DRM. Have at it, but it's not the accepted RSS that we know and love today. It'll be something else. Call it something else. The RSS defined by Dave Winer didn't have DRM.
>It should also be noted that Google is the only Feed Reader that allows refeeding of shared content.
I did a refeed with NewsGator, but had to add on a plugin to do that. I did that feed for years.
>Your splog would be a splog if it took every single item from people in an automated way. Splogs also are used for two purposes: 1) TO get more links to items that they are being paid to SEO up. They need to hide those links inside other content so that Google doesn't catch on and kick them out. 2) To put Google ads next to the content so that they can get ad money's.
My link blog does neither.
Actually it is much worse than a high quality splog, as you have don't very little to add value to the content, such as indexing, folksonomy etc
RRS was neaver eaven intended to be a private service other wise they would have built security into the damm protocol.
My value is in picking the gems out of 200 feeds for you so you don't have to.
Maurice: Andy is a Johnny come lately and is trying to make RSS into something it never was designed to do.
My feeds contain a nice copyright statement, even allowing commercial use.
I do understand copyright though IANAL
I worked in the computer games industry, mainly for a Polish developer of business apps and computer games. We faced 95% piracy of our products.
If you are republishing someones content in whole or in part, or referring to them, isn't it correct to trackback? That is the whole idea of trackback.
There are many national newspapers in the US that require payment just for an excerpt.
They offer RSS feeds of their content to subscribers.
My belief is that individual articles represent a "complete work" as far as intellectual property is concerned.
If you quoted the whole of a single article from the NY Times, they would come after you.
The technology doesn't need DRM as it is already fairly secure as far as delivery.
What you are suggesting is similar to insisting that everyone use PGP for email, and that it shouldn't be viewable outside the intended email client.
I believe that took additional skill to setup, and probably had much greater control over the content that was refed, such as an excerpt.
You do realise that Google linkblogs can be setup to be fully automated?
I can setup a tag in Google Reader which is just your content, every single post, and then decide to share the tag as a seperate feed.
There is no sensible way on earth you can block it, or even know who is doing it.
I have been watching the feed count of Darren Rouse at Problogger.net for the last week or so.
His readership it seems is going down... or so it seems.
I notice in your Podcast Google about all the stats they have. It is a shame that publishers will no longer be able to tell who is reading their content.
That has a huge effect on the value of advertising space.
I am not suggesting this is what might happen, but this scenario is open to abuse.
"Oh, XYZ just said something nice about my last podcast" “Shift-S”
This is a commercial blog. You have you book advertised in the sidebar, and you frequently link through to your commercial activities, rather than chatting about the roses in your garden.
You are an influencer and an early adopter. Your activities and recommendations carry a lot of weight.
Just adding something to your linkblog, if it is sending traffic to people as you claim, gives you additional influence.
Don't kid yourself about the commercial value of your linkblog content
Really?
You have obviously had your head buried in the sand for too long, need to remove your blinkers, or maybe just expand your horizons a little.
How about a respected source... hmm Chris Pirillo
http://channels.lockergnome.com/rss/archives/se...
No. Trackback is when you are writing something that would be interesting to that blog post reader. Not reposting the entire post. It's pretty obvious you really haven't looked into the Google Reader. Every post there links to the original post. No trackback needed. Trackbacks go into the comment areas on many blogs and are considered spam when used that way.
>If you quoted the whole of a single article from the NY Times, they would come after you.
The NY Times only does partial feeds. If they published full text feeds they wouldn't come after me. By the way, have you ever talked with the publisher of the NY Times? I have.
I also wouldn't be taking EVERY SINGLE POST of the NY Times, only an occassional one. That usage is covered under fair use and Copyright Law.
>My belief is that individual articles represent a “complete work” as far as intellectual property is concerned.
False. A complete work is your entire publishing output. Your whole blog.
I can quote 10% of a book, for instance, and it'll be covered under fair use. Or 10% of a magazine article.
Scobleizer isn't one post. It's all posts. So, if you take 10% of the posts then I believe that would be covered under fair use. I know people disagree with me. But then they gotta have the money to take it to court, don't they? And, like I said, if you don't want to be reblogged you have two choices:
1) Ask me to stop. I will.
2) Publish partial text feeds.
>I believe that took additional skill to setup, and probably had much greater control over the content that was refed, such as an excerpt.
No additional skill. I just needed to install an app. Any 12-year-old could have done it. I had no control at all, just like here.
>I can setup a tag in Google Reader which is just your content, every single post, and then decide to share the tag as a seperate feed.
Good for you. I really don't care if you do that. How would people learn about it? And, would they see you as authoritative a source as they would me? Doubt it.
>I have been watching the feed count of Darren Rouse at Problogger.net for the last week or so.
>His readership it seems is going down… or so it seems.
Hmmm, I've only posted one or maybe two items from Darren this week. So, are you saying my link blog is getting people to unsubscribe from Darren's feed? If that's what you really are saying then you're simply crazy and not rational.
>That has a huge effect on the value of advertising space.
What's funny is that the folks in my link blog actually tell me that I'm sending them MORE traffic than they had before. Which has a huge effect on the value of advertising.
Like I said, you want to read comments? Gotta click over.
Want to read everything someone publishes? Gotta click over.
My link blog is a traffic generator. It sounds like you're just jealous that I don't read you.
>This is a commercial blog.
This isn't my link blog. How did those people find my link blog?
And, yes, I am doing it to provide a service to my readers. Thank you for noticing!
I helped talk him into using full text feeds and he hasn't complained about my link blog yet. I doubt he will cause I send him a lot of traffic through it.
I thought you might be interested in this article I just read...
What do you think?
Now that post might be read by noone, or it might get 50 comments which the original author might want to respond to.
Trackback is the method of notifiction that it exists. It is fair and propper use.
You are suggesting I could legally scrape 10% of all the content held in the NY Times historical database, and not be prosecuted?
It is just one website after all.
That is potentially millions of articles
And I could do it in partnership with 10 friends. I could have the whole of their content split over 10 interlinked domains?
Wow!
Maybe I do know more about copyright law than you.
Darren hasn't lost subscribers, he has lost the ability to track (a percentage of)his subscribers, as the number showing up on his feed stats has reduced.
Take a look inside Feedburner...
And that was mentioned in my original article, which you supposedly read before your Google Reader interview. (you did comment to it)
Why don't they give publishers the same stats provided by other Feed Readers?
Surely they should also give stats for linkblog content as well? (if you think it is so innocent)
Was your podcast with the Google Reader guys a PR exercise or a real interview with searching questions?
And do have a chat with Chris - he might be able to give you a more commercial perspective on this.
RSS could/should be as private as email if that is the wish of the person who owns the content... the publisher.
IANAL but believe it is your responsibility to ask specific permission from each feed owner you intend to republish on your linkblog.
Make sure you get Cutts and the other team in the same place at the same time - now this is good content - in fact, maybe you should have me conduct the interview!
People who see an example may well follow it (passing into the illegal zone) and then subsequently run over the second (albeit vague) line (higher consequences) because they didn't know they crossed the first line.
I'm not seeing your defense here and I think you need to take back your committment to something which (when considering the above) could seem quite irresponsible in your position as a leader, despite the perceived benefits or assumptions around shared knowledge. There's also the increasing Positive (not in the good sense) Externality (economics terms) of blogs as a 'knowledge spillover', i.e. the fact that they act as a Public Good and the authors of that content are not being subsidised to compensate.
It's very easy. I don't duplicate every post. Spam blogs duplicate every post with an algorithm. I only duplicate the best posts, maybe 1/10th of a blog like TechCrunch, maybe 1/100th of a normal blog that I subscribe to. Keep in mind I only subscribe to a small subset of blogs too -- ones that have very high signal to noise ratios.
No it's not. That's not how the RSS system works. It's worked well for years. It's very easy to opt out of my blog.
You can whine all you want. The system isn't broken and my link blog will go on. I note that not a single person included there has complained. Not a single one.
Why is that?
You can also publish your Google Reader shared items as a feed, FeedBurner'ed to make it more user-friendly. Here's how:
http://inkblots.markwoodman.com/2006/10/31/crea...
- Mark
not to mention that i've found a shit ton of blogs to subscribe to
he's giving credit, i mean it isn't as if he's copy and pasting content without citing sources. that would be wrong.
you're throwing the same arguments the record company throws at 14 year old girls putting videos of themselves on youtube singing their favorite singers song.
Citing sources doesn't prevent a breach of copyright, and certainly doesn't mean you can republish an entire post Stefan. Certainly a part feed/ extract with link would be acceptable under fair use provisions, but never a full post without permission.
I also noticed in the comments there someone talking about Google and Matt Cutts...I wonder how happy the people your scraping Robert will be when you get them banned or punished from Google for duplicate content? Drop Matt a line, he'll explain how it works.
As for saying that I'm not rational Robert you're right, I thought once you'd left Microsoft you might have joined the real world but it would appear that this isn't the case. You've got a splog that is helping value add to your own personal blog that not only features commercials, but is also a conduit and communications outlet for your own business and commercial interests with Podtech. Just because you don't have ads on that page doesn't make it non-commercial, and if you believe that you deluding yourself, and I mean that with the utmost respect. As for Andy's arguments pertaining to how RSS should be used...well I don't agree with the way he's putting it, but I do agree with what he's trying to say: RSS feeds aren't private as such, but in terms of use they are there on the whole (particularly copyrighted feeds and works) for private use in a feed reader, they certainly aren't there to be republished by you, or your friendly neighborhood spam blogger. Anyhow, could argue this all day, you're not ripping any of my feeds so I'll leave it at that, but certainly I hope you've given Automattic notice that they should expect some DMCA notices in against you in the future.
And when you call my link blog a "splog" it's YOU that is marked as not rational.
RSS stands for SYNDICATION. Sounds like you really are nutty on this one.
But, whatever. Differing views makes the world go round.
Hey, you all work for B5 Media, don't you? You're gaming Google by linking all your blogs together which puts people who don't join a network at a disadvantage. But no one calls YOU on that! Maybe THAT is the reason you don't like linkblogging. It lets the rest of us gain the same traffic advantage that you have by being part of a network. In fact, on your home page you even reprint headlines, but only from those people inside your network. How convenient of you to take advantage of Google that way! I see it now, you just don't want any competition.
You do note that this is Google that's making this reader. I sure would love them to remove some blogs based on my, and other people's, link blogs. Easy to prove and would be disastrous for Google's PR.
Isn't this the same thing as me putting a post of yours on my link blog?
Thanks! Please keep doing it!
OK. I own up. It's a fair cop. I was foolish. I was stupid. I was misinformed.
I thought I was clever. I thought I had the perfect solution to desktop versus Web based RSS readers versus NetVibes.
I decided to run Gregarius on my hosted server to provide - eek - a (personal) aggregator for my own use to read my favourite feeds from any machine. Anywhere.
No-one else uses it. No-one else knows of its existence. I add feeds. I delete feeds. Feeds are fluid.
However, I blatantly failed ask permission from any blog owner for permission to re-publish their content. Shame on me.
Now I am nervous because I am clean shaven.
Will the 'Andy Beard RSS privacy police' be paying me a visit ?
Worried of London.
PS. And now I have advertised the existence of this aggregator to the InterWeb. Doh !
If you had read my original post from 2 weeks ago, plus the current one (including all the comments) I think you might determine that I am looking to discuss the situation, and am suggesting giving the owners of RSS feeds a little control over how their generously supplied full content RSS feeds are used.
This is in the interest of RSS users / readers. It is much better to introduce some protocal such that aggregators and sharing features warn a reader before they decide to share content they are not licensed to share.
Your aggregator specifically is actually one step better than Roberts shared content because it only contains an excerpt.
@ Albert Pascual
You are not offering a feed with full contents
@ Robert
Very strange, one of my comments seems to have not appeared. It was definately submitted, because when I attempted to resubmit, the Wordpress system reported that it had been submitted previously.
The message contained an important warning regarding the dangers of taking a Google Reader shared feed and passing it to Feedburner.
Are RSS publishers really unconcerned regarding their viewing figures?
The real readership of http://www.problogger.net/ isn't going down, but the Feedburner stats have dropped from approx 8350 to 7800 in the last couple of weeks.
I am just a concerned citizen, certainly not RSS police
Hey, back off on the caffeine, Robert! Don't start talking about yourself in the third person, either, or we'll need to do an intervention. ;-)
Maybe you're both right. Certainly, a lot of blogs whose content you republish benefit from increased traffic, so you're right.
Your blog (and the link blog attached to it) serves a commercial purpose (your career advancement, self-promotion, etc.) and is closely tied to your commercial activities. So maybe Andy's right - it's for a commercial purpose, and you gain a very valuable currency (authority) through your use of others' content.
Just because you're pretty sure you're right doesn't mean you have to curb-stomp the person you're debating with.
This will come up increasingly as RSS becomes more popular. As a web developer I have been parsing various kinds of feeds including video and photos.
A photographer recently contacted me and said his images on the public Flickr rss feed were copyright and I had no business including them in a Flickr rss feed????
I removed that feed, but also advised him that putting your photos on a public site that includes them in RSS is silly if you don't want them posted anywhere...
Summation: You create the feed and have the ability to have either excerpts or the full feed. An RSS feed can turn up ANYWHERE. Act accordingly, RSS is good for you :)
Sharing snippits from an RSS feed - a feed which, it should be remembered, an author has explicitly made available - benefits the public far more than it inconveniences the author. It robs no one of income, adds traffic to the author's site, and gives their work valuable publicity. I've discovered half a dozen sites through Scoble's link feed which I now read regularly: without the link blog, I would not have found them, and they would not now be getting any traffic from me.
If you don't want to get into link blogs, stop using full text feeds. It's as simple as that.