eBestAgent

We all want publicity. We submit our site to Google, Yahoo, MSN and others. We ask readers to subscribe full, snippet or e-mail newsletters. Our nice WordPress automatically ping search engines whenever our blogs are updated. We even let anyone to comment on our blogs. We let search engines to index every single word and link. Why? Because we want them back and back for more.

Now the trouble comes in. You provided a feed or syndication RSS on your blog, found out that your posts are popping up on other people’s blogs everywhere. Basically they syndicated or republished your posts.

Did they violated your rights? Is it illegal? Why didn’t they ask for permission? Well, true answer lies between whether you provided a web syndication or not.

Here’s the quote from Wikipedia:

“Web syndication is a form of syndication in which a section of a website is made available for other sites to use. This could be simply by licensing the content so that other people can use it; however, in general, web syndication refers to making web feeds available from a site in order to provide other people with a summary of the website’s recently added content (for example, the latest news or forum posts). ”

Here’s the LiveJournal’s take syndication on LiveJournal through a feed. Question FAQ #155

“My content is being syndicated onto LiveJournal and I don’t want it there. What can I do?

You must first take server-side action to block the content from being syndicated to a LiveJournal account. For instance, if the syndicated account on LiveJournal is using your site’s RSS or Atom feed, you could either disable that feed or block LiveJournal’s IP address (204.9.177.18) from accessing your server. Either will prevent your content from being syndicated onto LiveJournal.

Syndicated accounts retain entries for two weeks to allow LiveJournal users time to view them; after that period, the entries are automatically deleted. Content may continue to be visible on the syndicated account after you have disabled access to the feed, but there is no way to accelerate the automatic deletion process.

LiveJournal will not take action if the syndicated account is using a feed provided by your site. However, if you are unable to disable the feed or block LiveJournal’s IP address, you should contact the LiveJournal Abuse Prevention Team for further assistance. Similarly, if your site does not offer a RSS or Atom feed, but the content is being “screenscraped” and syndicated onto LiveJournal, please file a report with the Abuse Prevention Team.”

Basically LiveJournal will republish your feed if you provide a feed on your site. Do you use FeedBurner? Read FeedBurner’s terms of use before use its services.

Here’s how to protect your contents or add copyright disclosure to your RSS feeds. If you’re using WordPress, you can get a plugin from wordpress to add or embed copyrights so that you can trackdown who’s violating your rights. The plugin is called Angsuman’s Feed Copyrighter. You can read his post on how to protect your RSS feed.

My final answer to the question?

Don’t be afraid to syndicate your full post or half feed. In long term, you’ll win. Go ahead let them republish your posts. You’ll get free advertisement. Usually the syndicating side benefits more than republishing side. Because many people, including me want to get to the source of the story.

Here’s the quote from Wikipedia:

“Syndication benefits both the websites providing information and the websites displaying it. For the receiving site, content syndication is an effective way of adding greater depth and immediacy of information to its pages, making it more attractive to users. For the transmitting site, syndication drives exposure across numerous online platforms. This generates new traffic for the transmitting site — making syndication a free and easy form of advertisement.”

Happy Syndication~!!!

Technorati Tags: syndication, RSS feed, rss legal, rss rights, wordpress, copyright, copyright plugin, web syndication