Just wondering people's thoughts on limiting the use of rss feeds. Do companies/people providing the feeds to the public have a right to enforce how the feeds are used? More specifically, if you look at a rss site like www.topix.net, who get their feeds from other sources, do they have a right to tell me how I can and cannot use their feeds on my site, that they're taking from other sites?
Can you be more specific as to what you are trying to do with a feed? Also, can you cut the middleman (topix) and syndicate the feeds from their suppliers directly?
Well, I was more looking for a general discussion on using rss feeds, but for my own use, it would be a lot more convenient to use topix than the original sources, as I will be pulling 100's of local feeds for my site. Take a look at this page for an example: http://www.canadaphotoseries.com/alberta/southern-alberta/lethbridge (news on the bottom-right).
I would think in order to limit how they are used to very specific parameters they would have to first secure them in some manner... IE they can't make them generally available to the public and then tell you you can't use them.. But I am not a lawyer and I am just guessing.
Well, I'm just going to go ahead and use them... I can always delete them or replace them with Google News or something if they ever decide to return my email or something....
IMO, feeds and its contents are property of the publisher, not the republishers. To use any feed you should check if the owner permits it. Some people publish their full content feeds but don't allow republishing or any comercial use. If do remmber well, Calacanis, as a example, asked a web feed reader to use only the sumary feeds as they had ads on the site and he didn't wanted them to cash money from their full feeds. And the same happened in Spain with a site called xataka and its feeds. IMO you should have an agreement/autortization to use their feeds if nothing different is stated on the site.
I've sent them several emails, and have yet to hear back. Their entire site is based on the fact that people will use the feeds. I'm only using the title and link of the feeds, no body text or anything...
If someone puts a public rss feed on their site, it seems to me it would be hard for them to then argue that another site cannot use it. What would be the purpose of it? I put a public syndication feed on my site and someone used it! OMG. SUE. But anyway under fair use I would assume you could use a snippet of a full content feed.
Maybe to individual users read the site by using an feed reader like bloglines? Is the purpouse of your indian travel journal to by copy & pasted & published in another site completly for free? Your site is online and public available so should I copy it? Feeds can be used to build web content, but this is not the only use they have -not even the main- and does not mean they are published to be republished in another site.
Hm, well to go back to the OP, it was a legal question. In my very short search I find that some higher profile sites do have ToS attached to their feeds. They generally say use it, just link back. In those specific cases, that answers the question. As far as legally using a feed without a ToS - I was suggesting that a site offering a public syndication feed would have a hard time arguing someone using it is infringing. A public syndication feed would look like a pre-digested fair use device (or some legal mumbo-jumbo like that). Just my random "not a lawyer" thoughts on the matter.
I'm not lawyer too, but at least here in Spain when nothing stated, Copyright is supossed. So therefore you're not allowed to copy, reprint or republish without previous permission from the copryright owner.