|
The_Copyright_Debate_and_RSS
| The Copyright Debate and RSS
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:
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.
|
|
| |
| |
