I have been filling in content with RSS feeds, and then get an email from a lady thinking that I "stole" her content. I'm like, she's the one posting her feed. What is the deal with this. See, I found this great program that converts the RSS to HTML so it is search engine friendly, but it is still an RSS feed. Does anyone know the legalities behind RSS feeds, and if Blogger/Google has a view? I am searching but can't find anything yet. Thanks in advance, Charisse
Depending on what you're doing with her content, you very well might be stealing it. If she's writing the content and you're grabbing what she writes off her RSS feed and reposting it on your site, yeah you're stealing. If you're posting excerpts (not the whole article) and telling your readers where you found the original information, then you're not stealing.
I thought it was pretty obvious to everyone they were feeds. I used the rss feed and it pulls up their information (description of the site- I never edit that out) and all of the links go straight to the site. I even go so far as to write a description about the site and why I like it, and am posting their rss feed. It's not like I copy and paste excerpts or articles...it is an rss feed that goes through HTML and Javascript. That's why I don't understand why people freak out over incoming traffic to their sites.
People freak out because splogs grab their content and re-post it. It doesn't matter if the splog is pushing Viagra and the original post they've scraped is about your grandmother's dying wish for a rhinoceros horn to be buried beside her - the splog will post it. Many people are worried that splogs will diminish the original author's search engine ranking. They're not worried about the few people that will be coming to read the full post from your site.
Haha! This happened to me before. The title was even linking to the person's blog, and he was still angry flaming and etc.
I did post on her blog to ask her if she was serious that she didn't want incoming traffic. I also told her that I was using her RSS feed that she had pasted on the top of her blog. I deleted it anyway, no big deal you know...but it's the principle of the thing. By the way, I have found my feeds syndicated on other's blogs and I have no problem with it whatsoever. They all link back to me, have my name, and show up in search engines.
That's a good point, but hey...why worry about RSS feeds ruining your ranking...Google can take care of that all by themselves...
I have someone using my feeds as well, but it's just rss stuff that I'm gathering. So at the end of my posting day I just put in a little something extra that this person picks up but has nothing to do with their niche. I still don't know if they have a bot doing it, or doing it by hand.
If she's offering it out on an RSS feed, you were totally fine in using it, since that's what it's for. She probably didn't understand that whatever blog software she was offering actually had an RSS feed or what that meant, but in the final analysis it's her stuff to give away or not. It sounds like you did the right thing in explaining life to her. If she's insistent, the right thing to do is drop it. I've had similar bizarro episodes that just make me shake my head. Good luck, TSE