Newsgator is not stealing our content (or "One more time: our full RSS feeds are for individual, non-comercial use ONLY."

I got a flurry of calls on Friday from our readers because Newsgator suddenly--and without permission--put ads against our blogs in their RSS readers. Our full-feeds are published for individual, non-commercial use only. We have been very clear with everyone--from Yahoo to AOL to Newsgator--that we do not allow ads against our full feeds.

Now, the folks at Newsgator are all good people who I consider friends. I called them up and they were nice enough to step out of their board meeting on Friday to let me know it was technical mistake. I take them on their word, and the fact that they immediately pulled back the changes is good enough for me.

To be very clear with everyone in the industry: WE DO NOT ALLOW ADVERTISING AGAINST OUR *FULL* RSS FEEDS. If you want to put ads against our feeds you *must* use the headline feeds and no more than the first 100 characters of the post.

When someone does put ads against our full feeds we:

a) start up the legal machine
b) block the site from loading our full feeds and replace those feeds with one that tells users which RSS readers we support (i.e. the ones that don't violate our copyright).
c) report them for violating the Google Adsense, Tribal Fusion, etc. terms of service which prohibits people from putting ads against content they do not own.

If RSS reader companies want to make this a showdown we will simply:

a) pull our full feeds from your services
b) create a private labeled RSS reader that we own and only allow our full feeds in it and compete with you
c) work with the other large publishers to support the private labeled readers

Let me be clear to RSS reader companies: You have no right to make money off of our full-feeds. None. Any advertising against our full content is ours and it belongs to our bloggers and shareholders. If you want to make money off our full feeds you need to cut a deal with us--it's called syndication and folks have been doing it for a long time.

THERE IS NO BACK DOOR WAY TO ADVERTISE AGAINST OUR CONTENT--I DON'T CARE IF YOU CALL IT RSS OR IF YOU DON'T HAVE A WAY TO MAKE MONEY OFF YOUR RSS READER! That is your problem to solve not ours.

I've been talking to Newsgator and many other RSS readers for years BEGGING one of them to do a deal with us to split revenue in our full feeds but no one with critical mass has stepped up to the plate. If someone with an RSS reader at scale wants to do a deal with us I have a very simple solution:

a) We will take the leader board on the top of our feeds and give you our ad code for it.
b) We will let you have the skyscraper below the fold.

That gives you about 20-30% of the revenue for the pages. That's far in my books. If you want this deal it needs to be done with a contract--don't go doing it on your own now. :-)

This is a very serious issue and we are going to fight to protect our bloggers and their content. Period, end of story.

NOTE: I'm hoping to hear from the Newsgator folks on their blogs:
http://www.rassoc.com/gregr/weblog/
http://www.feld.com/blog/
http://blogs.newsgator.com/daily/

Tags: bloglines, brad feld, BradFeld, feed burner, FeedBurner, feeddemon, newsgator, rss, rss readers, RssReaders

Oct 22nd 2006 1:28AM
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21. Content isn't free, and the author does hold the copyright, and can say what are the allowed, and disallowed, uses for it.
That is true, Alex.

And if Jason had said that they don't allow people to read their full RSS feeds, that would have been that. I would have thought it narrow mind and silly, but it would have been a legitimate choice.

The problem is that Jason didn't object to the use of the content (i.e. private non-commercial use, by a person wanting to read the feed), but as to the technical method by which this explicitly allowed usage is done.
He said that a private non-commercial use of the feed by using a free reader (e.g. Bloglines) is allowed, but using it by an ad-supported reader (e.g. Newgator) is not allowed.
Newsgator are not the ones using this full RSS feeds. The person reading the feed, Newsgator's user, is. And they private non-commercial users, which should be allowed to do so. Regardless of whether Newsgator supports themselves by subscription charges, by ads, or by draining their VCs.

This metaphor is awkward, but it's like buying a book and being told that the publisher only allows you to use reading glasses that you got for free, because otherwise the glass manufacturer is making money out of their book without permission.

Anyone has a full right to say what uses of their feeds are allowed, and what aren't. But it's not their business what tools a legitimate user is choosing to use.
If I'm granted permission to read the content, it is my choice how I want to read it, and how I want to pay for the program I use to read it. The copyright holder shouldn't be able to go that far.
"Our content is not allowed to be read on Samsung displays, because they have this big plastic logo at the bottom of the screen and are not paying us royalties for the people reading our content while seeing their logo at the corner of their eyes" ??

Posted at 9:10AM on Oct 24th 2006 by Yaron

22. Yaron:

>But it's not their business what tools a legitimate user is >choosing to use.

Actually, it is.

As an author you are granted the right to control how your content is reproduced or performed. Lucasfilm has the right not to allow reproduction in cinema halls that are not THX certified. A Movie producer has the right to say that you cannot play your DVD on an unsecure device, even if you have purchased the right to watch it. This may or may not be a sound business decision, but that's an entirely different and unrelated matter. The book analogy is flawed because in this case, someone else is making profit off your contents.

Your analogy would be more precise if you - as an author - said that everyone can photocopy your book as long as he does it on an individual and non-commercial basis. Would that restriction be met if a library -no matter how big or relevant or whatever - photocopied your book AND put their own ads on it?

Posted at 2:25PM on Oct 24th 2006 by Alex

23. > A Movie producer has the right to say that you cannot play your DVD on an unsecure device, even if you have purchased the right to watch it.

Actually, AFAIK, this is done because of licensing agreements with the manufacturers. As far as I recall all the lawsuits on this were based on breaking of licensing of the technology, not on any copyright issues.

> The book analogy is flawed because in this case, someone else is making profit off your contents.

They're not making a profit of the content. They're making a profit from providing a tool that allows people to read the content. People can use this tool, or use other tools. Some tool-makes make money by selling the tools, some by allowing people to subscribe to the tool, some don't make money, and some make money by ads.
So saying that nobody can show the content unless they license and pay for it, that may be legal, I don't know. But if income from an ad-supported reader has to be given to the creator of the content, then also should a percentage of subscription costs, or purchase cost of other reader software. It's the same thing.

The thing is that they specifically allowed "individual non-commercial use". And the user is the person using the feed reader, not the company running the feed reader. Never mind how it pays for itself.
It's not as if they said that reading the feed is not allowed unless you pay a fee. That would have been a whole different matter.

> Your analogy would be more precise if you - as an author - said that everyone can photocopy your book as long as he does it on an individual and non-commercial basis. Would that restriction be met if a library -no matter how big or relevant or whatever - photocopied your book AND put their own ads on it?

Can't read the feed without a reader. Well, theoretically my browser can show me the raw XML, but nobody claims that this is what they meant by "individual non-commercial use". They very obviously allowed people to use feed readers in order to read the feeds. And now they complain because said feed readers make money.
I can buy the book without resorting to your library's photocopied book. I can't read the feed directly. But I was explicitly allowed to read the feed.

Posted at 5:06AM on Oct 25th 2006 by Yaron

24. > Actually, AFAIK, this is done because of ...

"Licensing" is just another word for how authors' rights are granted and transmitted. It's simply a right they have, just as the Lucasfilm example.

> They're not making a profit of the content

Well, this is a case of basic cause-relation analysis. Which is the variable which, when altered while everything else remains the same has the most impact in profits?

No content + ads = very little profit (someone will probably click on an ad anyway)

Poor content + context-free ads = very little profit, too.

Poor content + content-aware ads = more profit.

Good content + content-aware ads = even more profit. (because there will be more readers)

So of course they are profiting from the content.

> Can't read the feed without a reader.

Can't watch a movie roll without a cinema, either, but that doesn't mean that the author hasn't the right to specify what kinds of cinema halls can perform the work.

The fact that you want to give your reader for free is no excuse for infringing copyrights. Nobody is forcing you to make a free reader.

>I can't read the feed directly

The fact that I need a DVD player for playing a DVD movie is no excuse for a DVD manufacturer to insert contextual advertisments in a movie because he wants to offer the DVD player for free.

The fact that I need a TV for watching a TV station is no excuse for a TV manufacturer to insert his own contextual ads in the *public and open* broadcast just because he wants to offer his TV for free.

Anyway, your line of reasoning has already been tested by companies like Gator which, under the excuse of "a tool that the user chooses to install", delivered competitive advertisments or directly modified or "enahnced" the content users were viewing, displaying their own ads. End result? lawsuits, more lawsuits and yet more lawsuits, injuctions against gator, out of court settlements and finally, claria networks stopping this kind of behaviour and distancing themselves from the gator name.

Posted at 4:09PM on Oct 25th 2006 by Alex

25. Hi, Jason -- I'd like to talk with you about this issue when you have a bit of time. I'm working with a company called Splashcast that is launching a mixed media syndication player. It's free. And RSS is a big part of what will make it work. The question here comes down to permission. How will you work with publishers that share your feeds that are displayed in a widget? If the feeds only appears in the widget itself, is there an issue? What if the widget is on a blog page with text ads? That would cross the line, yes?

Posted at 11:56AM on Nov 5th 2006 by Alex Williams

26. Let's not be too quick to judge. If Newsgator says it was a technical mistake, let's just take it as that. The fact that they were more than willing to correct it should be good enough. I doubt there was ny harm done. Mistakes happen, life goes on, let's just all move on and not make a fuss.

Posted at 11:40AM on Nov 15th 2006 by Anthony Berkeley

27. Computer Reseller, Assmebler, AMC Software, Laptops, All Related To Computers

Posted at 9:37AM on Nov 25th 2006 by MYA

28. Computer Reseller, Assmebler, AMC Software, Laptops, All Related To Computers

Posted at 8:19AM on Dec 12th 2006 by MYA

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