RSS feeds were originally used to point to content on websites, and did not carry anything more than a title or brief introduction to the content. It was natural to assume that syndication of feeds--republishing of them by third parties--was allowed and even desired, because it drove traffic to the publisher's website. But the way feeds are used today is often different from the original model, and the cultural values that grew around the original usage cannot always be applied to today's feeds.

Today, many feeds are intended not for syndication, but for individual subscribers to subscribe to in their desktop feed readers. Some contain full content, and are intended as alternatives to websites rather than pointers to them. Some feeds contain--and are supported by--advertising. Some feeds point not to the feed publisher's site, but to webpages that the feed is commenting on. When syndicating today's feeds, syndicators should take care to do so ethically, and should remember that their could be copyright issues involved.

For example, when syndicating a feed that is supported by advertising, is it ethical to remove the advertisements? And when syndicating a feed that contains full content, is it ethical to reproduce the full content, or should the content be truncated to encourage readers to following links to the publisher's website when the item is one they are interested in?

Another issue that has arisen in the world of RSS is scraping--the creation of a feed for a site by a third party. If the orginal publisher doesn't want to publish a feed, then scraping the site to create one may be a copyright violation. If the feed is going to be used privately by the one scraping it, that may be okay (but I'm not a lawyer, so don't take this as legal advice), but syndicating it probably isn't. But that doesn't mean that all scraped feeds are illegal or unethical. Some sites may welcome scraped feeds because they want a feed, but simply don't have the expertise or resources to create one.

Reader Comment:
Carlotta Chataukwa said:
Greetings Antone, Thank you for the excellent topic. As a small commercial site still in development, I do want to make 'ethical' (also read 'Legal') use of news feeds. The above comment highlights a particular quandary of many small commercial sit...
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Absent explicit authorization to the contrary from the publisher, I recommend following these guidelines:

1) Only use third-party scraped feeds for private consumption.

2) Don't republish the entire content of full-content feeds. Truncate it significantly so that the portion you publish acts as a teaser for the rest of the content.

3) If each item links back to the publisher, publish all of those links. If not, publish at least one link to the publisher alongside the content.

4) Consider publishing the links as standard <a href="..."> style links rather than as JavaScript links so that you give a little PageRank to the publisher. JavaScript links won't give the publisher any PageRank, but they will send them traffic. But is that enough? You'll have to answer that for yourself.

5) Always respect the wishes of a publisher who has explicity asked that their feed not be syndicated, or only be syndicated by specific types of organizations or individuals.

What to do with advertising-supported feeds is a difficult question. Advertisers are often sensitive about what kinds of sites their advertisements appear on. Since they don't have the opportunity to screen the sites of potential syndicators of feeds, it is possible to argue that you shouldn't leave advertisements in when syndicating ad-supported feeds. If removing ads from a full-content feed, you certainly shouldn't publish the rest of the content untruncated. You might consider asking the publisher.