Scobleizer - Latest Comments in Blogger says “it’s OK to steal, if they use RSS”

Re: Blogger says “it’s OK to steal, if they use RSS”

sarah — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 05:35:12 -0000

richard it that your real name???

Re: Blogger says “it’s OK to steal, if they use RSS”

chris — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 12:59:29 -0000

is www.feedMashr.com kosher in this sense?

Re: Blogger says “it’s OK to steal, if they use RSS”

Dan — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 14:24:31 -0000

Robert, I understand that you care, and why.

However, I'm not convinced that you're being reasonable in doing so. To me, it's as if you set up an open bar and then got angry with people who drank too much and got loud and stupid. Yeah, they are jerks, but it's an inevitable consequence of having an open bar at a party above a certain size.

That ISPs (a conservative, legally-vulnerable bunch) agree with you does not necessarily make you right, from an internet-philosophy perspective. You're right about the law (probably right, that is, depending on whether my implied-license argument has legs) but we all know that in these fast-moving times the law doesn't always map very well with the custom and usage of the community (a community that some of us, at least, value more highly than we value the opinons of "series of tubes" senators). Don't be too proud that Senator Stevens (one of mine, for my sins) is on your side.

That said, the trackback spam is ugly stuff, which is why I have disabled trackbacks on all my blogs. In my corner of the blogging world, the benefits of trackback are minimal compared to the abuses.

Re: Blogger says “it’s OK to steal, if they use RSS”

Robert Scoble — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 04:21:48 -0000

Dan: I really don't care if you steal (er, use) my content. But I do care when you trackback spam everyone in my name. Then I get freaking angry.

By the way, that site is now shut down. That's what happens when you go over the line. Reasonable people who run ISPs say "uncle."

Re: Blogger says “it’s OK to steal, if they use RSS”

Dan — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 03:58:00 -0000

I run one of the few adult fetish blogs that has frequent, usually-daily, posts that include actual human language (as opposed to dirty pictures or really bad porn-speak marketing text) and so I'm a constant "victim" of scraper types who grab my RSS feed and republish it on their own sites without attribution.

I put "victim" in quotes because bitching about any uses made of my syndicated feed strikes me as akin to bitching when someone links to you -- as some people still do. The purpose of a document on the world wide web is to be linked to; don't put it up if you don't want that. And the purpose of an RSS feed is to be syndicated elsewhere; don't put it up if you don't want that to happen. Or so it seems to me -- our host apparently disagrees.

Indeed, I'd go so far to argue that putting up a feed for syndication constitutes an implied, if not explicit, grant of license to republish the fed material, pretty much without limitation.

That said, a lot of the uses that get made of "my" text (again the scare quotes, because most of my posts are heavy on quotes from elsewhere, with a lesser volume of commentary by me) are pretty scummy; they most commonly get used to bulk up the keyword density of spammy (extreme advertising densitity, prose-content free) porn blogs. Attribution to me is often missing, or text only (linkless). My solution, akin to the guy who puts advertising in his feed, is simply to modify my feed. One thing I do is hack the feed template so that each item title ends with "-- from MYDOMAIN.COM" so that it's tough (impossible for scrapers using standard tools only) for "my" stuff to get used without attribution.

Re: Blogger says “it’s OK to steal, if they use RSS”

syawal — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 17:44:19 -0000

i wonder if any technology other than PageRank around available to flag those thief.

Re: Blogger says “it’s OK to steal, if they use RSS”

Jay — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 13:08:18 -0000

But when the newsriver pages take other people's content, remove the original branding and add material promoting a friend of yours, that's innovation!?

Re: Blogger says “it’s OK to steal, if they use RSS”

Robert Scoble — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 13:02:30 -0000

Miles: don't worry, full-text RSS is the only way to go.

Re: Blogger says “it’s OK to steal, if they use RSS”

Alex — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 13:00:56 -0000

I agree with Scoble regarding the differences between voice indigo and the Crazy folks. Although, I'm pretty sure Voice Indigo crawls like Technorati, Google, IceRocket, and make others. Google doesn't ask me for permission when they include my web page in their index/cache...

Anyway, back to the point. In the case of Voice Indigo, they place the RSS link and web site link right next to the title PodTech.net.

Kosso claims they are doing something wrong. Kosso happens to run Podcast.com, which one could argue competes with Voice Indigo.

Now, if you go to - http://podcast.com/show/1499/ you can see a page that looks very similar to the Voice Indigo page. The title of the podcast is a link back to the PodTech.net site and there is an RSS link as well. So how is this different than Voice Indigo's web page?

Sorry, Kosso, but it seems like you are just trying to trash the competition to give your service a leg up.

Also, if we're going to bring up the law in all this, then I should poiint out that the law protects people from things like libel, slander, defamation of characters, etc., in addition to content protection. Something to think about when one goes off half cocked and calls someone else a crook.

Alex

PS - I am not affiliated with Voice Indigo in any way. I do not have a podcast they distribute. I have in fact never actually used their service. I just find it amusing when someone who owns a podcast directory calls out someone else for doing something wrong and they actually do the same thing :-)

Re: Blogger says “it’s OK to steal, if they use RSS”

Miles Archer — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 12:58:32 -0000

please don't use this a reason to stop publishing full text RSS. (A Bloglines user)

Re: Blogger says “it’s OK to steal, if they use RSS”

Robert Scoble — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 12:27:21 -0000

Ange: there's a TOTAL difference. One guy asked permission, the other didn't. Also, one guy isn't spamming everyone with trackback spam. Also one guy added value to what I'm doing, one guy didn't. One guy is now shut down, the other isn't.

Re: Blogger says “it’s OK to steal, if they use RSS”

Ange — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 12:21:31 -0000

Robert

Seems like there's not that much difference between what the Crazy Factor guy was doing and http://scobleizer.scripting.......

Just add some advertising.......

Re: Blogger says “it’s OK to steal, if they use RSS”

jason — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 12:15:51 -0000

Kosso,

What the hell are you talking about?

There are two links (one to the web site and one to the rss feed) to the PodTech.net web site right at the top of the web page.

Published by: PodTech.net web rss
Copyright: PodTech.net 2006
Last modified: 2006-08-28 00:02:49.0

Why don't you actually look at the page before sending you "flag up". :-)

Re: Blogger says “it’s OK to steal, if they use RSS”

kosso — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 12:15:02 -0000

ok.. so interestingly, they have provided a link to podtech and the rss feed - not so for my humble 'bluggcast' - despite the fact that all the required rss elements are in place:
http://www.voiceindigo.com/...

hmmmm.......

Re: Blogger says “it’s OK to steal, if they use RSS”

kosso — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 12:07:21 -0000

you might be interested to see this page from voiceindigo:
http://www.voiceindigo.com/...

See if you can see any link back to podtech apart from the url to the feed image

*red flag UP*! :)

Re: Blogger says “it’s OK to steal, if they use RSS”

webomatica — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 10:28:56 -0000

This reminds me of buying a wireless router and realizing the WEP or WPA isn't enabled by default and the password is "admin". Unfortunately the manufacturer leaves it up to the user to lock it down. A lot of CMS have their RSS feeds on by default. I agree that it's wrong to verbatim copy someone else's post though. But with a blog as popular as Scoble's it was bound to happen even without RSS feeds...

Re: Blogger says “it’s OK to steal, if they use RSS”

Tim Dawson — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 09:20:43 -0000

Copyright law is designed to protect original content. No offence, but most (all?) of what's written here is a regurgitation of news and your own opinions on stuff.

So what if there's a regurgitation of a regurgitation?

Re: Blogger says “it’s OK to steal, if they use RSS”

Piers Fawkes — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 09:14:10 -0000

We had the same argument with Tailrank. Sometimes the best thing to do is out them until something better comes along:

http://www.psfk.com/2006/08...

Re: Blogger says “it’s OK to steal, if they use RSS”

Rob Hyndman — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 08:28:34 -0000

Exactly right, Robert. He's a creep, plain and simple.

Re: Blogger says “it’s OK to steal, if they use RSS”

Larry — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 04:59:07 -0000

>>Ahh, so if it’s easy to copy it’s OK to steal?

Why lock the door to my house when I leave? Because it's easier than trying to get your stuff back.

If someone from Sealand is stealing your content, how exactly are you going to stop them?

That's not to say someone couldn't scrape the screen if they knew how to code, but RSS is leaving the door unlocked.

/just saying

Re: Blogger says “it’s OK to steal, if they use RSS”

Richard Tionary — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 03:00:00 -0000

if you have an issue with trackbacks scoble, post about that, not about copyright.

Spammers btw are never going to care about copyright, so that's a dead end solution.

Also, why are you worried about Google pollution? Their algorithms are smart enough to figure out who is the original source of material based on pagerank.

Re: Blogger says “it’s OK to steal, if they use RSS”

Robert Scoble — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 02:48:23 -0000

Ajay, you made my evening!

Re: Blogger says “it’s OK to steal, if they use RSS”

anon — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 02:20:06 -0000

I don't completely understand the issue, but hiding behind copyright doesn't seem to be a good long-term solution. What is the solution? Is it possible to block RSS feeds to the particular scraper, block IP range, etc?

Isn't the whole purpose of these here internet tubes to transfer data freely and present it in different forums?

Sure, if this guy is sending your blog posts around as spam that's an abuse of the system, but should trying to stop him via copyright ruin legitimate reposting and syndication of RSS feeds?

Re: Blogger says “it’s OK to steal, if they use RSS”

bobwyman — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 01:58:52 -0000

Scoble, you're right, the guy's an idiot and following his advice would result in copyright violations. Just because something is in RSS or Atom format does not grant the right to do anything with the data. However, putting data in that format, placing it openly on the net, pinging, etc. do create an "implied license" to *syndicate* the data. But, syndication alone is a pretty limited right and does not imply any right to create derivative works, etc.

Denise Howell and I talked about this subject on IT Conversations some time ago... See:
http://www.itconversations....
Also, I wrote a comment discussing this subject on a Denise's new ZDNET blog (http://blogs.zdnet.com/Howe.... See: http://talkback.zdnet.com/5...

bob wyman

Re: Blogger says “it’s OK to steal, if they use RSS”

Robert Scoble — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 01:37:14 -0000

Richard. HAVE YOU NOT BEEN READING A DAMN THING I HAVE WRITTEN TODAY? Damn.

I spelled out EXACTLY why this guy is pissing me off. It has everything to do with trackback spam.

Also, Google can penalize you if your stuff is copied too many places on the Internet.

Also, my readers were getting pissed off (because of the trackback spam, but a couple because their own content is getting ripped off).