Every so often I wonder why our legal system thoroughly screws up any issue that involves technology. Then I read posts like this one, from attorney Martin Schwimmer at The Trademark Blog, and I start to understand.
It was brought to my attention that a website named Bloglines was reproducing the Trademark Blog, surrounding it with its own frame, stripping the page of my contact info. It identifies itself as a news aggregator. It is not authorized to reproduce my content nor to change the appearance of my pages, which it does. In response to my inquiry to Blogline’s CEO as to whether they sell advertising, he indicated that they ‘are not currently running advertising.’ Nevertheless, the Blogline’s home page currently is soliciting ‘targeted advertisements.’ I would also assume that Blogline is accumulating commercially-useful mailing lists (its privacy policy appears to allow it to sell information). The privacy policy also has a provision entitled ‘mergers and acquisitions’ clearly allowing it to sell its lists.
Thus, in my view, Bloglines’ reproduction of my site is a commercial derivative work. Bloglines has agreed to remove my site from its service and I thank it in advance for its cooperation.
This is perhaps the stupidest thing I have ever heard. Schwimmer publishes an RSS feed. You can see it here. Go ahead and click the link and you can see it in your browser in a separate window. Note the complete absence of any formatting. This is how RSS feeds work. In fact, Bloglines is a news aggregator, and a really good one. An aggregator picks up the contents of a Web site from its RSS feed, minus any design elements and contact info, and displays it within the aggregator. (Mr. Schwimmer is going to be really, really shocked if he ever discovers how many people are reading his RSS feed in other news aggregators and are seeing exactly the same stripped-down display of content as Bloglines users.)
As of today, 71 people subscribe to this blog through Bloglines, and I thank every one of you. I even have a little button on my home page that allows Bloglines users to automatically add a subscription just by clicking. If you’re curious about how RSS works, this is an excellent way to get started.
(Via Scoble’s link blog.)
Update: Derek Slater, Harvard-based copyright wonk, tries to take Schwimmer’s complaint seriously:
One of the key issues seems to be what having an RSS feed implies others should be able to do with one’s website. If Martin had no RSS feed and Bloglines was simply scraping the site, it seems people would feel very differently. But why must RSS make a difference in this case?
As I wrote in a comment at Derek’s site: Perhaps the difference is that Martin chose to publish a version of his own site, minus formatting and contact information, in the RSS format, which stands for Really Simple Syndication. The word syndication should be a tip-off that you want other people to make your content available. This is the usual and customary definition of RSS. To pretend otherwise is disingenuous, and if Schwimmer wants to change the commonly accepted definition of how RSS feeds are used, he really needs to start a larger argument, not throw a public hissy fit over a company using his RSS feed exactly as it was intended to be used.
Moral: If you don’t want your site syndicated, don’t publish in a syndication format.
Ed Bott 
Actually, I think Schwimmer is cool with other RSS readers–it’s just Bloglines he doesn’t like.
It sounds like he believes that Bloglines frames his whole site, without attribution, and that’s what he doesn’t like.
I tried, briefly, to see how Bloglines does this because I vaguely recall seeing my own site displyed this way. Couldn’t figure it out in 30 second so I gave up. Maybe one of your other readers will know how…
But that’s the whole point. Bloglines is nothing more or less than an RSS aggregator. It just runs in a Web browser. It displays Schwimmer’s entire RSS feed. If I use NewsGator (another Web-based aggregator), I see exactly the same thing. If I use a client-side aggregator, I see exactly the same content, in a different window, and the developer of that aggregator could choose to put ads in it.
If Schwimmer thinks his contact information is so important, he can edit his RSS template to include those details.
Btw, there is no view of Bloglines that has his site framed in a Bloglines window. His RSS content, which he provides, is being redistributed to 190 people who will soon be cut off completely. Since he controls what goes into his RSS feed, this decision is, to say the least, short-sighted.
I’m not convinced the law is screwed up here. RSS feeds are copyrighted material. We can’t ignore copyright law everytime we have a new technology, and claim that it doesn’t apply. If that was the case we would have no order in the IP world. Trust me, nobody working in IP in the western world wants copyright law thrown out.
So where did I say I want copyright law thrown out completely? I make my living as an author selling copyrighted material in book form, so I clearly ave a dog in this this hunt.
The whole purpose of publishing an RSS feed is to share your content. If someone is deliberately reframing your content in a way that either (1) makes it appear that they are the author or (2) allows them to reap commercial benefit in an improper way, then yes, I have a problem with that. But neither of those cases is true with Bloglines.
In fact, if Schwimmer wants to accomplish the stated purpose of his objection, he can do so much better by publishing useful excerpts in his RSS feed that summarize the point of his post and include both a link to the longer post on his Web site and his contact information. That would be much more productive than whining about unfair use when nothing here appears to be unfair at all.
“But neither of those cases is true with Bloglines.”
Huh? Bloglines clearly has plans to introduce targeted ads in the RSS feeds it serves.
Well, “clearly has plans” is not the same as “is true.”
Unless you want to charge them with conspiracy to sell commercial services. And even if they have targeted ads, much depends on the implementation. Done properly, there is nothing wrong with that.
What do you think of Yahoo’s feature that lets you put RSS feeds on the My Yahoo page, where there are ads?