No, it’s not a big deal putting in a copyright on a page or in an RSS feed, but the existence of this copyright means nothing when it comes to others making the choice to follow the copyright.

At Really Simple Syndication, Nikolas Coukouma writes to Dave Winer:

“There seem to be some very serious issues about what can and can not be done with an RSS feed. I’m hoping you’ll think about them and possibly comment on the subject.”

Dave does exactly that, and says in part:

And of couse this gives me another chance to say that the EFF’s black-and-white view that content is evil and technology is cool falls apart somewhere in here. What happens to freedom to speak when anyone can do anything with your writing? It’s not just the media industry that has these concerns, so do us amateurs.

My answer to this lies more in the enforcement side, because I don’t see there being a whole lot that can be done when other people ignore copyright. Here is my response in the comments on this thread verbatim:

Over the years, as someone who has authored different online courses that have been stolen and put on other sites *several times*, I can see where these folks are coming from, but I do not think the solution is locking down the RSS.
And if it’s published on the web somewhere in HTML then it can still be scraped trivially, so whatever is done with the RSS isn’t really going to make any difference as Dare noted above anyway.

A better solution might be some sort of tool to find republished feeds on the www in whole (not in part) being used without authorization and automatically notify the webmaster of that site to take it down, and if no response within a certain period of time, then contact the website’s host. Again, with some sort of automated note to the abuse department.

Notifying the website and/or host almost always gets stolen content taken down. Sooner or later anyway.

I suspect someone will develop this type of automation tool for content copyright enforcement purposes and it will be heralded in groups where they want people to read the content in the aggregator of choice, they just don’t want people republishing in whole on other websites.

On one side it’s flattering to see that someone thought enough to copy your work, but on the other it’s insulting that they are profiting from it and/or sullying your SE exposure without permission.

We can’t claim accurately that our content is ‘exclusive’ if it’s used elsewhere. And for some sites this is an angle of how they secure advertising and other business deals. There’s a lot to be said about the value of exclusive, original content.

Furthermore, I would never assume using anybody’s entire full text with headline content on another website without permission was an acceptable business or personal practice unless they clearly indicated said full text content was in the public domain. And I can’t remember reading even one blogger yet that indicated his/her content was in the public domain and I’ve seen thousands and thousands of blogs.

Have you seen a public domain blogger? Links?

• The biggest problem with AllYouCanUpload
• Have your web page(s) been ripped off?
• Are non .com, .net, .org and country specific domains a scam?
• CNET changes mind over content from mp3.com, creates music.download.com
• Register lost or stolen property and get it back for free
• Copyright vs. copyrape: the Google Print saga