Free Website Content - The Copyright Debate and RSS
The Copyright Debate
RSS is commonly defined as really simple syndication.
So, this means that any material contained in a feed
is available for syndication, right? Well no, not exactly.
It means that the content contained in an RSS feed is
in a format that is syndication friendly, if the copyright
holder allows for syndication. Offering a feed for syndication
does not in fact grant any legal rights to anyone to
reuse the feeds content beyond what the Copyright laws
grant as Fair Use.
In practice, while your feed might legally
be protected, you could literally spend weeks attempting
to protect the contents of your feed. Legal gray areas
are introduced with Search Engines indexing feeds and
RSS Feed Directories including copywritten feeds, in
their categorized directories. How do you distinguish
between a legitimate search engine, RSS directory and
someone simply reproducing the contents of a feed for
personal gain? Legally how can you defend against one
and not the other?
One can ask whether it is legally is it
wrong to reproduce content in a feed. Morally is it
wrong? Does the site have a purpose or value outside
of the syndicated content? Is the aggregation of topic
specific feeds in itself a value?
If you use the feeds for content and label
the site a directory does that make it any more legal?
What about personal web aggregators? If it is for personal
use,is it OK?
Take a look at the following topic specific
feed directories:
Financial Investing - http://www.finance-investing.com
or
Security Protection - http://www.security-protection.net
One could argue that the above sites do
in fact provide value, aggregating and categorizing
related topic specific feeds in a single location. In
fact those in the security sector of the finance arena
might find the above sites of significant value but
what of the content creators?
Laws and Technology Collide
Most people publishing content via RSS support
republication of feeds. Because the technology is fairly
new, the laws and legalities are still murky. It is
assumed that content in RSS is protected by copyright
laws but let us not forget the Internet is global and
their is not a centralized body governing what is right
or what is wrong. Not only does law and technology collide
the laws of different countries, those creating the
feed and those displaying the contents of the feed may
contradict each other. It is for this reason, I would
advise that publishers using RSS to assume that the
contents of their RSS feeds will be syndicated and replicated.
Tips and Tricks to Protect Your
Feed.
That is not to say there are not things that
can be done to protect feeds. At the end of the day
being proactive is the best way to protect intellectual
property.
Part of feed protection is ensuring that
appropriate credit is given, this can be arranged by
including a copyright assignment in the final line of
the Item Description field.
Additionally you can include links back
to your website in the Item description field.
Use teaser copy in the RSS feed's Item
description field, linking back to your website which
contains the full contents of the post.
At the end of the day, protecting the
contents of a feed can be daunting and limiting. Controlling
your contents to ensure appropriate credit and links
are included is critical.
About the Author:
Sharon Housley manages marketing for FeedForAll http://www.feedforall.com
software for creating, editing, publishing RSS feeds
and podcasts. In addition Sharon manages marketing for
NotePage http://www.notepage.net
a wireless text messaging software company.
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copy of the issue or a link to any online posting would
be greatly appreciated send an email to sharon@notepage.net
.
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