Re: [syndication] Copyright and Syndication

[Aaron Swartz <aswartz@swartzfam.com>]

David Galbraith <david@moreover.com> wrote:

> Oh well you twisted my arm - I guess I'd better comment.

Sorry, I just wanted to hear your side of the story.

> I guess the contract contains the usual over formal legalese that lawyers
> have to put in.

I thought it was something like that.

> With a new
> product we will launch you will be able to create search returns that match
> the look and feel of your own site as well a webfeeds based upon
> pre-packaged categories.

So are you going to be a JIT-SE, or will you just search the metadata?

http://davenet.userland.com/1996/09/07/FloatingIdeas
http://davenet.userland.com/1997/07/26/JITSEs

I think there are some really cool possibilities here, but that's another
topic.

> The only issues that we are concerned about is that people don't take our
> entire database and then pretend its theirs and sell it to someone else - we
> want this stuff to be free.

That makes sense, the question is do you have the legal right to do this? I
think it's questionably legal ground. The only way I can see to do it is to
make signing of these contracts required for access to the feeds. If you did
that, you'd be OK, but I don't want that to have to happen. IMO, the feeds
should be public. Also, since you don't seem to make any money off the
feeds, why do you care how other people use them?

> Don't you just love lawyers!

Yup! Thanks for clarifying.

-- 
        Aaron Swartz         |"This information is top security.
<http://swartzfam.com/aaron/>|     When you have read it, destroy yourself."
  <http://www.theinfo.org/>  |             - Marshall McLuhan