Blogging 101 - How to Tweak a Bloggers Panties

Author wayne on April 25, 2008

Well, it appears I have finally succeeded in pissing someone off. Roy Osherove's Blog was recently added into the blogs I regurgitate on AskWayne.net, and this morning after a friendly email from him, I removed it.

What is the big deal? I understand that if you're a writer doing this sort of thing makes for a bad time, but as a programmer, what would it matter?

He had a post up on his site regarding AskWayne stealing content, but I don't see it there now. Oh well, I was hoping he would leave it up.

I'm going to do some reading up on the whole battle that is RSS and site to site content duplication. I know there isn't any legal ground, so I'm not worried about anything, I removed Roy's blog out of respect, and because he asked.

If you find your blog here and want it removed, just let me know and I'll gladly remove it. No posts stating I'm stealing content is required, however, it is appreciated.

I'm going to try to answer these questions in the following weeks:

Is taking someone's RSS feed and displaying it on another site stealing?
If they allow full text posts, wouldn't that imply they don't mind full text posts on the other end? (At least, would it be their fault by providing it in the first place?
Why couldn't a feed reader be a complete site like AskWayne.net? It's my was expensive feed reader for many blogs, and the nice thing is I share it with everyone else.
Why would someone like Roy care? He's obviously been writing for some time, and probably has more subscribers than most of the .Net blogs out there, so he's known. Why would/should he care? - Update - He cares due to the amount of time he puts into his quality posts and considers them his, not anyone else's to regurgitate (I love that word...I know, you can tell).

Personally I feel absolutely no connection or ownership over my posts and you can regurgitate them anywhere you like, so I'm having a problem relating to Roy. ~~Perhaps he can comment here and enlighten me.~~ Not to worry Roy, you explained yourself well enough.

What are your thoughts on this? Would you mind if someone regurgitated your posts on another site? What if that drove more traffic to your site, would you still feel the same way? What if that added traffic made you more money, would you still be upset?

What if your traffic was reduced, but you gained more visibility from the whole affair?

Personal note to Roy: My apologies for tweaking your panties~~, I can't say I understand your position as I still need to do some reading up on your position.~~ I understand your position now and agree with you. I should not have regurgitate your content without asking your permission first.

RSS is great for consuming content from others, but be careful to ask the supplier for any rules they may have before you regurgitate it on your site. Each person/entity will be different, so it is probably best to not do it yourself, but instead define the site to allow people to submit their feeds to you and supply any limiting criteria for the feed.

Due to serious ignorance on my behalf, I decided to simply kill off the AskWayne.net site.

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Tim Says:
April 25. 2008

Wayne,
Maybe I can help you understand Roy's feeling/point of view. Basically you are taking away readers from his site, which effects his advertising & readership. Your stealing his impressions. I write a "Daily Find" link blog at http://www.techtoolblog.com but I never post more then a sentence from the original article and always link out to their site to read the entire thing. I'm providing the benefit of searching the web for great blog post/articles daily but would never repost their articles. In a phrase "Not cool man". There is a reason for the blockquote tag

Reader Says:
April 25. 2008

Would ABC be pissed if CNN just copied/pasted the stories from ABC's site onto CNN?

You are talking someone else's content and presenting it as your own.

And I think it is somewhat illegal, its called "copyright laws".

Wayne Says:
April 25. 2008

Thanks Tim, that helps me understand it a little, however, wouldn't the onus be on him to reduce the amount of content in the feed as well? I understand that he may be trying to provide a benefit to people using RSS readers so they don't have to hit his site to read the entire post, but isn't that his issue? Allowing something he doesn't agree with to occur while he takes no steps to alleviate the issue opens him up to these things.

I guess this means there isn't a lot of good will toward DotNetSlackers (which is where I got the initial idea) since the software is the same. I paid no attention to the number of lines coming back, perhaps they do.

Let's say I refused him. What then? He'll post 'Stealing' posts about AskWayne and maybe reduce the amount of chars going out in the feeds, but in the end, what recourse does one have? Block my domain etc...? Doesn't seem like a very good system where the only constraint is being cool.

One only has so much time for so much so I appreciate you commenting and helping me understand the thoughts and emotions behind this.

(If the gravatar with the red nose appears, ignore it...My nose really isn't that red.)

Wayne Says:
April 25. 2008

Reader at nothanks, I'm hardly presenting it as my own, I never made that leap of stupidity.

AskWayne is comprised of many blogs, not just the ones that are regurgitated. The ones that are regurgitated all contain links back to the source, effectively supplying another avenue for readers to find the author. All that, and the author did nothing but what they are already going to do, write posts.

Couldn't I argue that this is a benefit to the author? (Ignoring the lack of cool)

This, I think, is the crux of my misunderstanding I think. I would be quite pleased if someone was regurgitating my posts elsewhere, however I'm no where near the level of blogger that Roy is...

There just seems to be no real way to address this issue without injecting some 'be cool' factor that we bloggers must obey. That isn't good for me since I'm a control freak and if something shouldn't be done, then one should not allow it.

Thoughts?

pete Says:
April 25. 2008

Why are you just regurgitating the content?

Cant you, at the very least, just link to the "cool" article, and write a simple summary in your own words of why you think the article is "cool" to you?

The part that gets me is that you dont see anything wrong with what you are doing. In my eyes, you owe Roy an apology.

Wayne Says:
April 25. 2008

I did apologize, in fact, I took the whole site down and left an explanation. I feel completely foolish, but it took a few emails back and forth with Roy to finally get it through my thick skull that what I was doing was wrong. Not due to any legal problems, but because it affects them as individuals as well as their families.

Like I said, I feel completely embarassed and I'm extending sincere apologies to those whose blogs I stole from. I will be working to make things right with all of the bloggers I stole from in the coming days and weeks. I'll be posting what I do herre in case anyone is interested.

Pete, the site was a project of mine to learn more about blogging, social networks, and various bits of the technology surrounding these things. It started innocent enough, but when I found the software I was toying with could read from an RSS feed and display it, I thought it was great and didn't really give it a second thought. Even though, EVEN THOUGH I was reading blogs on blogs and so totally immersed in the whole thing, I never realized what my actions would cause. When I did, and I did at various points in the sites life, but I never thought about the effort that individuals are putting in and how they might feel about the whole thing. Near the end days, I thought it would be great to collect from anywhere I could find the RSS feeds for anything and everything C# and ASP.Net related. I would scan for what I'm interested in, much like a local RSS reader, except, I used the site as that. I don't like any of the local rss readers, and I'd never open them when I find one I like. I was constantly doing something on the site, so it was the perfect place for me to get everything I ever wanted and more. I actually thought there would be people that would appreciate the fact that I was collecting more than others, to make it easy to obtain so much info from one spot, again, much like other sites have done.

I deal with technology daily and this just baffles me. I don't know how I could be so completely ignorant of my actions, but I accept full responsibility for what I did. I'm singing a different tune now when i never expected I would. Poor Roy experienced a side of me I really hope will not show itself again. We didn't have it bad, I was simply being a dick in some ways. So Roy, my apologies to you, thanks for actually responding when I would have hit delete.

I'm not sure I should leave this post up or not. I expained to Roy that we could make an example of this for the greater good. I'm waiting to hear his thoughts on that.

Pete Says:
April 26. 2008

I would think that the whole point of having an RSS Feed was to allow people to pull content from your site, just take a look at most News & Tech sites out there in the net...

My personal feelings is, if you don't want people using your RSS feeds don't have them, I don't.

I did notice that Roy's site shows up on Google with a "Google Cached Version" link available.... I would have thought that this unsolicited Caching of content performed by Google would also raise the same kind of issues as someone using your RSS feed on their site..?

Isn't this too "stealing his impressions" If there is a difference, someone please explain.?

Well at the end of the day Roy emailed Wayne and asked him to remove the RSS feed content, which he did, and everyone was happy.

And so, life goes on...!

Wayne Says:
April 27. 2008

That's an interesting point about the Google cache. I use that quite often for results that contain Expert Exchange crap as well as for a few others. When I do that, Expert Exchange doesn't even know about the hit, as well, you get the stinking answer which Experts Exchange charges money for!

I still feel the same to some extent, if you are going to provide it, it will be used, and not always for the sole purpose for which one intends. That is how we humans innovate and grow.

At the end of the day, I took the site down. I can use that license for a different project in the pipeline anyway.

Rose Says:
June 18. 2008

Why didn't he set his feed to short?

Wayne Says:
June 18. 2008

Personal preference I guess. That's the problem about this issue. I could have been a real jerk and not done anything and enjoyed all the hits he would have given me by posting hiw 'AskWayne steals content' blurbs. You can take bad stuff and make it good sometimes.

And maybe that is what I should have done. Left it up there so that the real issue could get some airplay. I tried to formalize it a bit here: www.waynejohn.com/.../...iolate-copyright-law.aspx

Pete Says:
June 18. 2008

The question was: Why didn't he set his feed to short?

There could be many reasons,

(1): In todays world no-one is accountable for their own actions or errors and Wayne is the main cause for Global Warming because someone else did not limit their RSS feed length.

(2): It's so un-Web 2.0 to pull a full RSS feed from someones site, that Wayne caused oil to reach $140 a barrel by doing so.

(3): He probably just didn't think to limit the feed length..!

Wayne Says:
June 18. 2008

Pete, always a pleasure and kick hearing what you have to say!

Now, can I get back to destroying the world?

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I'm a web developer in Southern California. I've built web sites for many notable companies and have come to realize exactly how much of a division there is among those that understand the technology and those that don't.

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