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Jason Calacanis is in a tizzy about his content. And while I'm not crazy about the tone of his response, it's a viable topic for discussion.
RSS Abuse: What’s fair use and what’s abuse. (or Skweezer gets it wrong). - The Jason Calacanis Weblog - calacanis.weblogsinc.com
Being a publisher in the age of complete RSS feeds is really trying.I can buy that. It sucks to have your work undermined, and if you've got an interest in controlling your content, it sucks to have that control wrested away. But if you want people to get on your side, you've gotta take some steps toward being a good syndication citizen. And Calacanis (like most of us) is well short of that ideal.
So here's a series of suggested Things Good RSS Citizens Understand. They're not etched in stone, not even in my own tiny mind... but I think they're a good starting point. So let's get going.
- Syndication means syndication. When (generic) you publish a syndication feed, expect people to republish it. That's the whole idea. People using the technology as intended are not abusers, slime, or anything other than people.
- Your business model is not the Web. RSS aggregators are not obligated to take a form that suits your content distribution model. If you want to hitch a ride on the innovative backs of those developing personal publishing technology, then you must be agile enough to go where they take you.
- If you don't want it out there, don't put it in there. The easiest way to control the dissemination of your content is to provide headline-only, summary-only, or excerpt-only feeds.
- The right thing should be easy to do. Whatever the publisher defines as "the right thing" should be as easy and obvious to achieve as possible for third-party services and tools. So if you must offer a full-content feed for some users, also offer a partial-content option, and place it first among your autodiscovery links. Or publish using Atom, providing a partial-content <summary> along with the <content>. Don't make automated pieces of software guess at your intentions... give 'em something to go on.
- Help them credit you. Republished feed items should generally come with a prominent author credit and link back to the source. But some feeds provide awful (or no) author info, giving client apps little to work with. Make sure your name is in any <author> or <dc:creator> elements, that the feed itself is properly titled, and that there are one or more ways to link back to your site.
- IP blocking is your friend. If you don't like the way a service or app uses your stuff, and you can't make any other arrangements, block the IP of their spider. You don't owe anyone access to your server, so if all else fails, don't moan and complain... just make 'em go away. And if they try to route around the blockage, well, then you've got a slimy abuser on your hands. Feel free to fire away.
12-29-2004 07:12:54PM - Permalink - Post Reply - Read Comments [0] category: Staff
related topics: (Jason Calcanis) (blogging) (RSS) (syndication) (feed) (content)