Re: [syndication] (Random Thoughts) Content syndication and content "cleansing"

[Eric Bohlman <ebohlman@netcom.com>]

On Thu, 18 May 2000, Kevin A. Burton wrote:
> What I mean is that a lot of sites (about 50%) are only syndicating
> their headlines, mostly HREFs.  For most content (e-mail, taskbar,
> AvantoGo, WAP) this isn't any good.  Why?  These are thin clients that
> can't really render complex HTML and if they could either don't have the
> space (my PalmV is only 2"x2" and my cell phone is even smaller) or
> don't lend themselves to complex content generation.

...

> When I replicate Jetspeed (and Portlets and RSS) to my PalmV then I
> should be able to view the RSS and then read the article.  The article
> would be generated from a Servlet that would be given a param to the
> original source.

Have you taken a look at the XML Document Navigation Language (XDNL) Note
submitted by NEC to the W3C (<URL:http://www.w3.org/TR/xdnl>)?  It
addresses some similar issues.

> Thoughts?  What is the legality here?  Technically it wouldn't be used
> to rip out advertisements but to only display this content to devices
> that couldn't originally see it anyway.

IANAL, but I'd have to guess that the legal issues are similar to those
surrounding a translation service like Babelfish.  Translation of a work
from one language to another is definitely a reserved right under US
copyright law; I'm not sure what the status of re-rendering it by proxy
would be (although any *editorial* transformation, like deleting
"irrelevant" navigation information, would almost certainly constitute
preparation of a derivative work and thus be infringing; even
freely-copyable documents often come with the restriction that they must
be reproduced in substantially identical form).