[freeroleplay] Splogging the FRPGC Feeds

[Jerry Stratton]

> On Thu, 2006-09-28 at 08:39 -0700, Jerry Stratton wrote:
> I assume you agree that they should be politely asked to comply  
> with the terms of the GPL or desist.

Well, I haven't seen it yet--I started to go to the main page you  
listed, but it was taking too long.

> I'm still not certain they are doing anything so wrong that it  
> requires intervention. Playing devil's advocate: OK, not complying  
> with the GPL license of the web site is not good. But, on the one  
> hand, they are helping to publicise the FRPGC by redistributing our  
> news, even though they are also profiting with their Google ads.  
> Also, unlike other sploggers, they do link back to the original  
> source of the articles.

> No, Jerry does the same thing which I welcome. But, then Jerry is a  
> valid gaming site, not an anonymous link farm.

See, I'd remove that "valid/not valid" site from the equation. What I  
would do is take this at its most basic. Ignore the ads and the  
profits and whether they're a gaming site. That's all really  
irrelevant to copyright violations of this sort (again, I'm assuming  
that they're republishing the entire articles, even the longer ones,  
so we don't have to worry about fair use concerns).

Suppose all that they were doing was republishing the article,  
including a link back to the original, but not complying with the  
GPL. No ads, no implication of spam. Would we care?

What would you do, for example, if I were republishing the full text  
of longer articles on my site, rather than just grabbing the title  
and first paragraph and linking back for the full article?

There are different kinds of RSS; if they were republishing an  
excerpt feed (such as the one I make available for Gods & Monsters),  
that, I hope, would be fair use; it is what RSS feeds were designed  
for--to get out excerpts and a link back to the real site.

As I recall from when I wrote the feed reader to grab the FRPGC feed,  
that feed is a "full content feed"; I recall having to do some extra  
work to ensure I was only pulling an excerpt.

I would not go so far as to state that republishing the full content  
is the default purpose of a full content feed. On the other hand, I  
wouldn't
go so far as to claim that someone who did think republishing was the  
default purpose of a full-content feed was wrong. Republishing is the  
purpose of RSS feeds, after all.

I'm looking at the FRPGC feed now, and it doesn't contain any sort of  
license reference.

So I think what we should do is:

a) decide if we want the full content feed to be republishable by  
anybody or only under some license; and
b) make a note of that decision in the feed itself.

I'm inclined to go either way. I think it depends a lot on what kinds  
of articles will be published there. So far they've been long
press-release-style articles for which it makes sense to allow full  
republishing, especially since this particular site is linking back.

If we plan on larger articles, or soliciting larger articles, we may  
want to require that the full content be republished only under the  
GPL (or going to an excerpted feed).

Jerry
-- 
http://www.ItIsntMurder.com/
"Give a man a fish, and you've fed him for a day. Teach him to fish, and
you've depleted the lake."--It Isn't Murder If They're Yankees