Opt out of RSS

[andrewducker]

Title
Opt out of RSS

Short, concise description of the idea
An option to opt out of RSS/ATOM and any other syndication method that LJ chooses in the future

Full description of the ideaSome people aren't happy at the fact that sites like bloglines can duplicate their journal. They don't realise that this is an effect of having an RSS feed of it, and

Comments

[miome]

Folks should have control of where and how their content is displayed.

If someone chooses to screen-scrape, the user can make a copyright-based complaint against them. If, however, data is obtained via RSS feed, the person displaying the content that existence of RSS feed gave them implicit license to do so.

[troworld]

No. You can charge with copyright violation whether your IP is taken from your journal page, LJ's recent posts feed, or your own RSS feed. What you post is your intellectual property no matter how people get at it. RSS just makes it easier.

[gerg]

If someone chooses to screen-scrape, the user can make a copyright-based complaint against them.

Under what grounds? "Mommy, he's reading my public information and I don't like it because he's not using my style even though I posted this information publically!!"?

I'm honestly confused as to how you could possibly think that a copyright complaint could be filed on someone for merely reading what is already available for public consumption.

As far as the suggestion goes, if we want to give the tinfoil-hatters something to turn off RSS, that's fine with me, but the default should be on. We should also, IMO, write a FAQ about the fact that "Public" entries can be read by anyone by any method at any time even if the person does not have a LiveJournal account. I don't think a lot of the userbase understands what Public means, at least in the LJ context.

[decadence1]

Do that and every reader of lj_userdoc will cry. :-( gleffler, please don't make the readers cry. :-(

[miome]

For instance, here:
http://www.greatestjournal.com/~copperbadge/
That's a syndicated feed from this livejournal:
http://www.livejournal.com/~copperbadge/
The user copperbadge did not give Greatestjournal permission to repost his or her content. This isn't just a matter of one person reading it in their RSS viewer, it's a duplicate journal being created on another site.

If someone only wants their content posted on LJ, I think that's a pretty reasonable request. If I build a webpage and post a work of fiction on it, it doesn't give people permission to repost that work elsewhere on the internet. The same thing goes for journal entries.

[decadence1]

Nothing is created there. It's just a syndicated account. Public information is made publically available by "copperbadge" through their own free will, to anybody or their dog with access to a web browser. Quod Erat Demonstrandum.

Your last paragraph is not comparing like with like. If you use a webhost which is a webhost that has RSS feeds for content then maybe. Again there are security settings on LiveJournal (perhaps "copperbadge" prefers righteous indignation as opposed to actually using them) as well as, I'm sure, blogging sites that don't offer this most standard of features.

[miome]

(perhaps "copperbadge" prefers righteous indignation as opposed to actually using them)

Please do not personally attack the person I used as an example. They may or may not have a problem with it, I have no idea. I just needed a quick example of a syndication account.

Due to the increasingly hostile tone of responses, I'll be turning off comment notification and not be making any more comments on this topic.

[ruakh]

I'm honestly confused as to how you could possibly think that a copyright complaint could be filed on someone for merely reading what is already available for public consumption.

Not for reading it, for re-publishing it. Remember that mere public availability does not put a work in the "public domain." If I publish a book - publically, with no security settings - and you print copies of it for yourself, for people to check out of your library, I can't sue your library's patrons, but I certainly can sue you.

[bridgetester]

Linking and sharing of content is the foundation of the internet. If people want to make their content closed (backdated, Friends-only, filtered, etc), then they should. If not, well then...

People need to remember that the LiveJournal community is representative of the greater Internet community. Public on LJ is public on the Internet itself.

[andrewducker]

We're not talking about people being able to read it anywhere. We're talking about people reproducing the content elsewhere - such as bloglines does.

[bridgetester]

I see public as public. This page, for example, could be seen very easily off LiveJournal and the lack of an RSS feed will not decrease this possibility.

[andrewducker]

If you had a website and I replicated it elsewhere, would that be ok with you too?

Not that _I_ mind. I just think it ought to be up to individuals.

[bridgetester]

I don't see it as reproducing content. I see it as making content available that is elsewhere.

Not photocopying, but linking.

I don't think we're going to agree on this distinction.

[andrewducker]

The reason I see it as reproducing the content is that it takes all of the words that appear in one place and causes those words to appear in another.

I can't think of any way that that doesn't mean reproducing those words.

If it just had the title and a link, then yes, it would be linking.

[ruakh]

Linking and sharing of content is the foundation of the internet.

That's absurd. Linking, yes. "Sharing" - that depends what you mean by the word. If you mean publishing your own content for the world to see ("sharing it with the world"), then yes; if you mean re-publishing other people's copyrighted content without permission (i.e., theft), then no. I mean, as in any copyright domain, there's a concept of "fair use," but that probably doesn't include two weeks' worth of the average journal.

[bridgetester]

I don't see it as reproducing content. I see it as making content available that is elsewhere.

Not photocopying, but linking.

I don't think we're going to agree on this distinction.

If it was passing the person's work off as their own, particularly with a complete lack of attribution, then it would not be fair use. But this is publicly available material with direct links back to the source, by the very nature of RSS.