[Air-L] etiquette for reusing or reposting blog posts

[Lois Ann Scheidt]

It is my understandings, and I am rarely the most technical person in 
any room, that the type of aggregation you refer to for your site, is 
basically manual aggregation - while the rss feeds come to you though 
automated means your decision making and posting processes are done 
manually.

While those used by the services you mentioned (digg, delicious, topix) 
are automated aggregators...who require that blogs register with them 
to be included in the service.

Also in the automated category are those blogs (or services) that do 
pull whole posts in their entirety from rss feeds into their website.  
Some are splog pages...using someone else's text to make their site 
look slightly more legitimate. Some are friends pulling together their 
friends posts much like Twitter gathers your networks twits.  Some are 
owned by folks with an interest in a topic who automate aggregation for 
keywords or specific sites that discuss that topic.  The ways to do 
this, as usually, are limited only to the technology and the persons 
ability to use that technology.

I wait patently to be corrected on the many technical misstatements 
that may have appeared in this post.

Lois Ann Scheidt

Doctoral Student - School of Library and Information Science, Indiana
University, Bloomington IN USA

Adjunct Instructor - School of Informatics, IUPUI, Indianapolis IN USA and
IUPUC, Columbus IN USA

Webpage:  http://www.loisscheidt.com
Blog:  http://www.professional-lurker.com


Quoting Robert Cannon <rcannon100 at yahoo.com>:

> --- On Fri, 7/25/08, Lois Ann Scheidt <lscheidt at indiana.edu> wrote:
>> Aggregation bring in a very interesting wrinkle to the
>> discussion.
>> They are, in essence, a passive way of appropriating posts,
>
> Hum.  Not sure what you are saying, but I think you misunderstand how
> aggregators work.  Aggregators act basically like clipping services -
> filtering through the information noise of the Internet and providing
> a product closely tuned to the audience's interests - through
> tagging, social networks, or other means of distribution.
> Aggregators do not copy the content, they aggregate links based on
> headlines and RSS feeds.  RSS feeds are a mechanism for authors to
> announce to the galaxy that their content exists.
>
> "Appropriating" is a loaded negative term.  Aggregators (at least
> myself, digg, delicious, topix....) are not appropriating in that
> they are not taking the content of the authors.
>
> On a typical day I might review 400 news and blog posts through RSS
> feeds, and boil them down to 20 posts directly related to Internet
> law and policy.  Nothing is appropriated.  The clips link directly to
> the original authors contents.  Many blogs and news feeds actively
> add their feeds to aggregators (indeed when I have heard from authors
> the most is asking why I DID NOT include their post).  Authors add
> their content to Digg.  Authors subscribe their RSS feeds to
> aggregators like TOPIX.  Authors want the existence of their posts
> advertised; readers want to be able to filter 400 posts down to 20 so
> they can follow their area of interest.  Aggregators are in the
> middle.
>
>> in that the
>> addition of the rss feed to the aggregators cue is
>> initially made by a
>> human being but after that all posts flow without
>> intervention.  In
>
> Hum.  Again, not sure what you mean.  Posts are created by authors.
> Posts are picked up by Aggregators.  In the Digg or Delicious models,
> some third party thinks they are cool, and tags them, and they become
> part of the social network.  Lots of human intervention.
>
>> short, it is possible for a blog to be added to an
>> aggregator without
>> the writers knowledge
>
> Again, hum.  Newsgator and Google Analytics will show you who is
> picking up your stuff.  It is pretty easy to know who is linking to
> you.  I think some CMS includes in it the function, "who is linking
> here"
>
> and for their posts to regularly be
>> presented on
>> the aggregation site without the writers knowledge or
>> approval.
>
> Hum.  Approval is not needed.  It's Fair Use pursuant to the
> copyright law.  And again, most authors who put their content out,
> want it read.  Aggregators promote content.  The aggregator is
> linking to the content - not copying the content.
>
> Of
>> course, since the initial feed was public, and most
>> aggregation sites
>> clearly attribute the posts to the proper blog the author
>> is cited.  So
>> the real issues become ones of ethics and audience.
>
> What's the issue?
>
>> As with all of the angles on this discussion...more
>> research is necessary.
>
> Actually, this area is will resolved.  It is well established that
> linking to people's content falls square withing copyright.
>
> See Is it Legal to Link
> http://www.cybertelecom.org/ip/link.htm
>
> Further, culturally, most people encourage you to link to their
> content.  Aggregators are linking to content in a large and organized
> scale.
>
> B
> Cybertelecom
> _______________________________________________
> The Air-L at listserv.aoir.org mailing list
> is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org
> Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at:
> http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
>
> Join the Association of Internet Researchers:
> http://www.aoir.org/
>