4 ms·

I'm having a hard time seeing a moral or legal difference between a feed reader that aggregates content from a bunch of feeds and a content aggregation service

• pulmo 11y ago
  1) The process of content selection shifts from the user to the service provider, liability for copyright infringement also shifts because now they have influence over and responsibility for the content selection process. 2) The user of a content aggregation service is paying (directly via money transfer or indirectly by seeing ads) for the content selection, not only for the provision of an automated service to retrieve feeds. One could argue that the revenue the service provider creates with content selection is based on the publisher's content, the publisher therefore should get a share of it.
• MacsHeadroom 11y ago
  A feed reader is like a TiVo someone uses to backup shows from the cable television service they have license to use, so that they can personally watch those shows. A content aggregation service is like someone ripping shows and then uploading them to a public website surrounded by revenue generating ads. The difference is pretty clear from a copyright apologists standpoint. Personally I don't see a moral problem with either of these, since neither scenario deprives the author of their data/content. No theft has taken place. I don't believe in copyright. But I suspect you, like most people, do.