I never heard anything like this before... in my life! I use 3 or so RSS feeds from sites to populate my blog, I then got 2 emails from the same guy, within and hour saying he's going to take me to court about this! Here are the RSS feeds I use: http://celebritybabynamesblog.com/feed/ http://feeds.feedburner.com/celebritybabyblog http://babyrazzi.com/baby/feed/ they aren't hidden and im ripping them off - they are there to be used. Here are his emails. I then emailed him back, stating basically what I said in this post, im not stealing content, it's available from their RSS feeds, im just using wordpress to publish them. I havn't heard one thing from the site owners themselves (unless he is one of them, which he never said so in any of the emails) .. hehe he might even be a member on here! Now - is this illegal? I was shocked when I heard that. Will adsense take this seriously once I explain that they are RSS feeds.... Regards, Linda.
I don't think you are in any legal trouble but this could potentially damage the reputation of your site and lead to lower business. Personally, I would tell him to f*** off but in order to keep your website going well in the forums I would recommend trying to work something out privately. Good luck!
I didn't think so - if the site owners didn't want me to publish them they could simply ask and I would take them down. I don't see how it could really hurt my business? I bought the domain like a month ago, and just stuck up the site, lol im more worried about adsense then anything else - I await their email so I can explain they are just RSS feeds. What im wondering is, should I wait for the email from adsense, or email them before - explain iv received emails from this guy, and say to them it's only RSS feeds?
if you include a link back to the original source then i dont see the problem, however you don't automatically have the right to syndicate any rss feed you want. you could be infringing on copyright material
Well you're in a real pickle, how about you find some other rss feeds? What I said before was if he goes to the forums with this info, but now that I think about it it may be against google TOS to use that type of content. It would be a good idea to email them beforehand and ask their advice.
Doesn't matter, I told him I would take it off, I took the site down and will put another one up when I get around to making it my own content. Now im emailing adsense to explain the situation.
Of course he can sue you if he wants - you are distributing his work without permission. I can't believe how naive some people are, if something is published in internet it definitely does not mean that they have given up their rights to that work. That's like asking if you can make copies of newspaper articles and sell them on street - you can of course but you will be sued.
thats crazy, rss feeds are commonly used on peoples sites! msn do it! (check out your live homepage, it actually says, feeds from xyz site)
He has the RSS feed on his website - does that not mean he wants people to use it??? Why else create it and publish it. That's just my take on things Ah well, it's been resolved now.
Good for you! As for the "he can sue you if he wants" thing, anyone can sue anyone for anything but in the end, it is mainly the lawyers who win
I capture RSS feeds, excerpt them and link back to the original author/source for the full story/article on numerous different sites. I do look for tos/usage terms on the rss providers website, if I see restrictions then I would just comment on the article manually, writing a summary and linking to the article. If you link to the source, typically no one would complain as it benefits them with the linkbacks. However, if you copy an entire article with no link back then might different... I suppose everyone looks at it differently. I provide an RSS feed on my website with the hope that others will syndicate it, feel free, please!! Others think that RSS feeds are only used by RSS readers as a convenience tool by end users and are oblivious to the social/syndication/distribution of content via rss. If I received a request from someone requesting to remove specific content of theirs or to halt utilizing their RSS feed, I would comply and move on. If I had someone trying to harass and intimidate me, I would tell them to kindly screw me and take up any legal action they want. I will counter the suit with one of my own.
Dont take it down, put it up and ADD more feeds. If a site publishes RSS they either dont know what they are doing (and probably stole the content) or they want it to be syndicated. Fark.com has RSS, Yahoo has RSS, both sites freely encourage the use of RSS. I dont think the guy is aware that if he says anything negative about you're website without definitive proof that you are stealing content that it is grounds for a slander / defamation of character case. This idiot is probably a lot like the guy that tried to tell me I was stealing google content by incorporating Google Maps "without Google's consent". You've got to love amature watch dogs that think they know everything. I would tell this guy to piss off, offer him the good ole "You slander me, I'll see you in court." and be done with it.
I think RSS feeds were intended to be used as a means of staying up-to-date on a website you like, not to use their content as your own. This is why this guy made such a big deal (I'm guessing). I've come across some sites that flat out steal my RSS feeds (and many others') and save them as blog posts. Yeah, you get the backlink, but sites like those you don't want to be associated with, plus we all know about Google penalizing duplicate content. It's all about quality control. It's ok to have a headline-type thing like Feedburner's chicklet, but when I find my post saved in someone else's monthly archive, in its entirety and without credit, I don't like that. One such webmaster even shut down his site after I called him out on it. Of course, it helped that 2 other people knew about it and we all notified his host and registrar.
RSS feeds are a bit of a sticky topic. Most sites provide their feeds for their visitors/users to stay up to date on any new articles/content added to the site. This is generally done through feed readers and sites like Yahoo/Google where you can add a feed to your personlized pages. This does not mean that they make the feeds available for other people/sites to use the feed as "content" on their sites. The safest bet would be to first obtain permission from the site owner to use their feed. As a webmaster you are responsible for the content on your site, so that means that you have to ensure that you have the relevant permission to use whatever content you have on the site. It is not up to the copyright holder to track you down and stop your using their feed/image or whatever. Although once it gets to the stage where the copyright holder tracks you down it's very likely that they are already at a stage where they will file a DMCA request etc. The rules for RSS feeds will vary according to the site. CNN does not permit anyone to syndicate their feeds (read their ToS). This does not mean that they don't have deals/agreements in place with Google etc to use it on their news pages. If other sites are using it, it doesn't mean that you are also free to use it... you never know what agreements have been made with the site(s) in question. Best practice is ALWAYS to ask permission FIRST. As an interesting note: A judge has ruled that you can't link directly to a webcast if the site owner objects. Linking issues aside, I think it might not be that different from usign RSS feedsto syndicate content from other sites without permission.
people publish rss feeds so that they can be syndicated by news agreagator software, it doesn't mean they give permission for you to syndicate it on your own website
Well, IMHO it is not illegal, just as well as it is not legal. How is that? If you syndicate the content (teaser) and keep a link to the original source or mention something like (Source: xxx.com) that is at least acceptable by most of us. While scraping them to your blog where it says (Posted by: you) is not just illegal, also unethical; make your own conclusions
You're kidding, right? That's like saying there're so many murderers out there that killing should be legal.