ReadWriteWeb

Bloglines latest press release left me a bit puzzled at first. In the press release Bloglines congratulates itself on having reached half a billion blog and news feed articles in their database, concluding that it makes them "the strongest blog resource on the Internet."

Fair enough, but I wonder why have they are suddenly re-focusing on blogs when a couple of months ago they were emphasizing search and non-blog information aggregation?

Then

Two months ago Bloglines was talking up going "beyond the blog" and waxing lyrical about "The Universal Inbox". At that time, late March, I pointed out here on Read/Write Web that Bloglines had done a makeover of their homepage - making it much more search-focused and barely mentioning its utility as a blog reader. At that time I wrote:

"...search now gets top billing on the page, ahead of blog reading and subscription. The search box is at the centre-top of the page, the search component of the circular graphic is at the top of the circle, and most of all the introductory statement mentions search first:

"Bloglines is the most comprehensive, integrated service for searching, subscribing, publishing and sharing news feeds, blogs, and rich Web content. It's free and easy-to-use."

Now

Fast-forward to June 2005 and search has now been relegated to the middle-right box, with "Subscribe" taking its (probably rightful) place in the centre-top box. This time I've taken a screenshot ;-) Also interesting to note the introductory statement now reads:

"Create a personal Bloglines page loaded with the freshest news about the things you love."

A personal page...that sounds familiar. Oh yes, it's what Yahoo, Google and Microsoft have all been busy doing lately!

Now my purpose here isn't to poke fun at Bloglines, because there's nothing wrong with them re-emphasizing blogs and subscription over search. Especially when the big Internet companies (Google, MS, Yahoo) are beginning to encroach into what used to be Bloglines' almost monopolised territory! Remember Bloglines was the only major web-based RSS Newsreader for a long time - all of 2003 and most of 2004.

Still it's curious that Bloglines has 'gone back to its roots' and is hyping itself again as a blog resource. Could part of that be because Bloglines search "continues to disappoint", as PaidContent.org put it? That's certainly a factor. But mainly it's because Bloglines/Ask Jeeves doesn't want The Big 3 stealing all their blogging mojo, so they're re-asserting their "blog resource" chops and at the same time staking their claim as a 'personal homepage' - the current trend among the big players.

Steve Rider is one of the developers of Microsoft's Start.com and he gives us an insight to the development plans for Microsoft's nascent Web-based RSS Aggregator / portal homepage. I think it's fantastic btw that Steve is willing to share his thoughts - and more importantly, that Microsoft lets him. Google could learn a thing or two from this open attitude. Anyway, here's what Steve says is coming up in Start.com:

A few comments on this from moi:

1) It confirms that Microsoft definitely wants Start.com to be an aggregator - and not just of RSS feeds.

2) I like the sound of this "write your own modules" idea, although I'm not exactly sure what it means. Anything that lets the users create new things has got to be good.

3) What does "Roaming the page" mean?

4) It's great that they'll add OPML import/export. As to my previous question of how the information management aspects of having a large set of RSS feeds will be handled, I noticed that Steve mentioned "folder creation" as one of the new features coming up. Perhaps Start.com will be competition for Bloglines and Rojo et al after all?

5) Finally, good to hear that Firefox bugs will be addressed. Steve also pointed out that "we use Firefox too" - cool, they must be real geeks then! ;-)

My posts about RSS Ripoff Merchants stirred up a lot of controversy and, somewhat surprisingly, it seems I've come out of it as The Bad Guy. I kind of feel like Lars Ulrich of Metellica in the Napster case - defender of artists rights :-)

Anyhow, I wanted my posts to specifically address the issue of software like SuperFeedSystem - which encourages people to take other peoples RSS feeds and use them on their own websites for profit. However that issue got lost in the bigger picture and many people wanted to take me to task for the fact I've got a copyright on my RSS feed - and my Web content in general.

So... let's talk about that then. Quite frankly I would love to have a Creative Commons license on both my weblog and my RSS feed. I was looking at Creative Commons again this morning and I'm just about ready to sign up.

But there's one thing holding me back - I'm not sure that the CC licences will protect me from SuperFeedSystem and its kind. Say I use the Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 license, which is (according to the Creative Commons website) "the most restrictive of our six main licenses, allowing redistribution". Will that license prevent someone using SuperFeedSystem to copy my entire RSS feed onto their own website? Let's go through it:

1. "Attribution. You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor."

- if they attribute me and link to my site, OK they're fine.

2. "Noncommercial. You may not use this work for commercial purposes."

- this is probably the crux of the issue, for me anyway. If they run ads around my content, then they're probably contravening my CC license - correct? But what if they don't run any ads around my content, but are just using my content to gain Google juice - is *that* contravening my CC licence? What if they are just using my content in order to have a "site that has what [customers] want and looks believable" (a quote from SuperFeedSystem's homepage) - is that counted as non-commercial?

3. "No Derivative Works. You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work."

- OK that's pretty clearcut (and believe it or not, I'd like to eventually open up my work to derivatives).

In summary: I want to go Creative Commons - so help me out please. Do you think the above license protects me from SuperFeedSystem and its kind? Whether or not you agree with my point of view on SuperFeedSystem is irrelevant - in *this* post ;-) The fact of the matter is I don't want someone re-using the bulk of my content on their own website for commercial means. Is a CC license the answer for me and others like me (and surely I'm not alone in this)?

So here's where I invite you all to pile in and kick the shit out of me, I guess. But can I request one thing: please give me *practical* solutions and don't get carried away with philosophy ;-) Also I'd appreciate it if you assume that I'm not talking about aggregators and search engines (because I'm not) - just humour me on that one, OK? :-)

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This week: RSS Ripoff Merchants summary, Web 2.0 for teachers, Open Source Radio talks about Web 2.0, EPIC II, search engines with RSS output.

RSS Ripoff Merchants summary

Well my follow-up post about RSS Ripoff Merchants certainly struck a few raw nerves, including for me. It attracted 55 comments, before I was forced to close them early for being persistantly off-topic. Most of the commenters completely missed the point of the post. For the record, my point was and still is: software that encourages people to use other peoples RSS feeds to auto-populate their websites, which is what SuperFeedSystem and others do, is an unfair use of RSS feeds. That was the only scenario I was talking about. Further, I wrote in the first paragraph of my original post on this topic that "I'm absolutely not talking about fellow bloggers who re-post an occasional post of mine - I'm specifically talking about sites that brazenly re-post everything and are doing it for commercial purposes."

Unfortunately a lot of the commenters refused to address the main issue, as summarised above. Instead most commenters took my post totally out of context - choosing to argue about copyright as it applies to aggregators, search engines, syndication, etc. Nothing to do with my post, which was about a specific scenario (SuperFeedSystem and its ilk). I got quite angry at this during the middle of the comments thread, which eventually led me to close the comments. 

Meanwhile SuperFeedSystem and similar products will be laughing all the way to the bank. Why? Because they've seen that only me and a few others are actively concerned about software that encourages people to steal original content and put it on their own websites for profit. If the 55 comments on my second post are any indication, most people seem to believe that original content has little value on the Web. If that's the case, then I think that's a very sad indictment of the Web today. Or maybe it's just a sad indictment on the people who left off-topic and provocative comments. I'd like to think the latter.

Needless to say, I'll continue to fight for the principle that original and quality content has value - no matter if it's on the Web or in a book or published any other way.

Web 2.0 for Teachers

On to less contentious things, Ken Smith of Indiana University wrote a post highlighting how Web 2.0 is extending the expertise of teachers. Ken wrote that "Web 2.0 does not serve as a veil hiding the authority of teachers. It is, instead, much more radical than that." 

Steve Lazar left a comment on my blog pointing to this page of Web 2.0 resource for teachers. Entitled 'The Read Write Web in Schools', it can also be subscribed to with RSS. Steve's blog also looks like a fantastic resource for those in the education community who want to find out more about blogging and Web 2.0 tools. 

Open Source Radio on Web 2.0

Chris Lydon's new public radio show, Open Source, went live this week. The inaugural show was on Web 2.0. The production and hosting by Chris was very professional, so this is going to be a fantastic radio show to listen to regularly. The discussion of Web 2.0 was a philosophical introduction to the topic, from a blogging and Two-Way Web perspective (as opposed to talking tech about APIs, web services and so forth).

EPIC Returns

An updated version of EPIC has been released by Robin Sloan and Matt Thompson. It's a short Web movie about the future of news media on the Internet. The original EPIC, set in the year 2014, revolved around a new Google-Amazon hybrid company called Googlezon and its challenge to old media (represented by The New York Times). Robin Good posted a transcription of the first EPIC, or you can view it here.

The new version of EPIC is set in 2015. It's more of an update than a sequel and the authors say it has "a slightly more optimistic spin."

Techie Post of the Week: Search with RSS output

Niall Kennedy works for Technorati, but his post entitled Gathering and distributing search results as RSS gives decent coverage to most of the main search engines that output results as RSS feeds: Technorati, Feedster, Blogpulse, PubSub, and MSN or Yahoo! Search. There are others of course, like Blogdigger, but I suppose you can't cover everything. One major search engine notable for its absense is Google - but that's not Niall's oversight, it's just that Google doesn't offer RSS feeds for its searches!

Speaking of RSS search engines, PubSub is one of my favourites - it's a 'future search' engine that delivers results from feeds as they occur, rather than finding past articles and posts. John Battelle chatted with PubSub creator Bob Wyman to find out more about how PubSub works - it's worth a read.

That's a wrap for another week! I don't know about the rest of you, but now I need a lie down and a cup of tea :-)

The latest version of Microsoft's Web-based RSS Aggregator, Start.com, has just been released. Microsoft first released a prototype in early March 2005 - my coverage here. Start.com is like a mix between MyYahoo and the new Google Personalized Homepage. It enables users to subscribe to RSS feeds and it is closely integrated with search. Here are some of my initial impressions:

- As per the first time, Start.com allows you to add RSS feeds to a show/hide menu bar on the left. They've gotten rid of the horizontal category banners though and added the categories to the left menu (Business, Entertainment, etc). They've also added favicons, which is a nice touch.

- It's not dissimilar to the recently announced Google Homepage, but unlike Google, Start.com has RSS subscription functionality and ability to save searches. So 1-nil to Microsoft. As for Yahoo, they still have the most comprehensive portal and they've been using RSS feeds for some time now. So I still view Yahoo as the market leader in this little battle for the best 'Web 2.0 portal' (to coin a phrase).

- Start.com is optimized for the IE browser - what happened to the Firefox support?

- If you go to www.start.com/3/ you then have to answer 5 questions in order to access the actual Start.com homepage, which seems to be a method of showing off their integration with search. Alex Bosworth suggested over at Greg Linden's that "They are trying to get the cache of Google by making their page 'elite'". Hmmm.

- Overall, it's certainly a more impressive effort than Google's, but there's a long way to go before they can compete against 'real' Web-based RSS Aggregators like Bloglines or Rojo. For a start (no pun intended), they should add OPML support so that users can upload their existing feeds. But even if Start.com had that, there's no obvious way of organizing all that information (no folders, tagging, etc).

As I suggested in my recent post - On Interfaces: Rojo, Bloglines, My Yahoogle - Microsoft, Google and Yahoo will all need to change their interfaces to scale up the amount of RSS feeds their users can track. Or will search be the key driver to these portal pages, instead of RSS aggregation?

Perhaps there will always be two classes of web-based RSS Aggregators - the full-featured ones like Bloglines and Rojo, and the homepage/portal ones which focus on search and news first and RSS feeds second.

To summarise the issue so far... a few nights ago I came across a website called SuperFeedSystem that was written in an overtly Informercial-like manner. The gist of it is they are pitching a product that automagically turns RSS feeds into content for websites. Sounds fine, right? Well yes, except they're talking about other peoples RSS feeds! For example, this is one of their pitches:

What's more, SuperFeedSystem explicitly states what they're doing further down their homepage:

I soon found two other software products that promise the same thing: RSS Equalizer and RSS Content Builder. There are others out there too.

So over the past few days I've been writing about these RSS Ripoff Merchants over on ionRSS and here on Read/Write Web. Hector Jimenez, the creator of SuperFeedSystem, left two comments in response to those posts. Here's his second comment (the first one is a shorter version of this):

While I give credit to Hector for taking the time to respond, I think his argument is akin to gun lobbyists who say: guns don't kill, people do. To my mind, software such as SuperFeedSystem, RSS Equalizer and RSS Content Builder is like a loaded gun in the hands of plagiarists and other people looking for "free RSS feeds" (to quote SuperFeedSystem).

Also I think Hector's response is more than a little disingenuous. Firstly, the issue isn't about modifying or removing content - it's about taking advantage of other peoples hard work and re-using it for profit. As Ian Kennedy from Six Apart put it, software like Hector's is positioning RSS "as a quick way to harness other people's original work for easy profits." Ian summed it up by saying "the fact of the matter is that the technology is in place to spawn thousands of automatically updating sites with no other purpose than to juice a search engine ranking around a particular topic."

Exactly right. Furthermore, Hector I'm not so sure your company will be able to escape legal ramifications. Your software is directly enabling people to skirt copyright and IP laws - and indeed you are to all intents and purposes promoting it in that manner. For example the SuperFeedSystem homepage says that by publishing RSS feeds "the owners of the content are inviting you to use what they've written". Well I can tell you that I am 100% NOT inviting you to re-use my writing. I'm inviting you to read it, not profit from it.

But I'm no lawyer... I'm interested to hear what the blogosphere thinks about this. Thoughts?

NB: This is a re-posting, slightly edited.

What would you do if someone was ripping your RSS feed off - that is, copying every single post into their website? And what would you think if some software companies actively encouraged this activity? I call these people RSS Ripoff Merchants. (a sidenote: I'm absolutely not talking about fellow bloggers who re-post an occasional post of mine - I'm specifically talking about sites that brazenly re-post everything and are doing it for commercial purposes).

I started off by laughing at it, but there's a serious side too. Content has value and these Ripoff Merchants are completely glossing over that fact.

A couple of days ago I took a light-hearted look at a dodgy RSS service called SuperFeedSystem, which was quite frankly laughable in its Informercial-like sales pitch. But at the same time its blatent glossing over of copyright issues was quite offensive ("You don't have to write a single, solitary little ole word!").

update: Hector Jimenez, the creator of SuperFeedSystem, responds over at ionRSS.com by saying "It is up to our clients to follow any applicable laws for use of the materials."

Jason Calacanis, owner of blog publishing network weblogs inc., highlighted a practical example. He wrote recently on his blog:

After that I found two more RSS software sellers who seem to be encouraging RSS feed ripoffs: RSS Equalizer and RSS Content Builder.

Some sample quotes, first from RSS Equalizer:

And this from RSS Content Builder:

I would remind services like these that some of us put an awful lot of hard work into our writing - it doesn't come for free!

Excellent techie tips from O'Reilly Radar: "A longer-term solution is to build your business model into the API. In my mind the most successful APIs for the company providing the APIs are those from Amazon and eBay."

Always good to read how non techies are using Web 2.0: Teachers need to give Web 2.0 tools "to students and to members of our community, to stop speaking only to other teachers, to stop behaving as an expert class, and to find a way to have a stake in the interests and knowledge of the community."

kuro5hin.org: "By acquiring a Print-on-Demand (POD) company and an ebook software company, Amazon.com is retooling itself to offer a complete publishing solution to authors disenchanted with the current state of publishing."