Originally Posted by vangogh

Scott I agree. I think much of this argument comes down to what rights are you granting by publishing a feed. I have a hunch we're giving away more than we realize, but again I don't know the specific laws. Those laws would likely be very different depending on the countries involved too.

This will definitely vary from country to country, at least until an international agreement can be reached. But it's rare, at least in America, to waive rights without your own consent.

Wikipedia will only accept images when the rights have specifically been granted to the general public to copy the work, even for commercial. They make this reasonably clear. With rss, it's ambiguous at best ... a person can use the argument that by making the content available in a way that benefits reader subscribers - the intent - the creator implicitly gave permission. But if the person who's legally capable of giving copy permission says they didn't ... I can guess who a judge would side with.

Originally Posted by vangogh

Giving and getting the book back is irrelevant. If you lend the book to someone and they read it they didn't buy it. Just because only one person at a time could read the book doesn't change that the author and publisher isn't getting paid.

The author gets paid when you buy the book originally, to be able to lend it out. This is why libraries aren't only in full compliance with the law, but very good customers; well loved by authors. You're right, that whether or not somebody you lend a book to returns it doesn't matter to © law. That only one person can make use of it at a time isn't central, but it's important. It's part of how courts determine fair use exceptions: I can buy a CD, use it at home, but make a copy to listen to in the car on long road trips. I can't then lend the original out and keep enjoying the copy.

Originally Posted by vangogh

If it's fair use to lend a printed copy of a book to a friend wouldn't it be fair use to lend a digital copy of a book?

I can sell you my copy of - even my license to - Windows XP now that I'm running Vista.

Originally Posted by meloncholy

Or consider this post. When I clicked the reply button, I gained copyright over it, and, unless I granted or waived certain rights in the Webmaster-Talk TOS (couldn't find the link to check), I could - according to this site - demand the removal of my post (even if it becomes central to a discussion), demand a share of ad revenue or even sue if the site is moved to another server.

Fortunately, this site offers revenue sharing. Preventing a move from one server to another would be shakier ground, methinks...?

Okay, I've kept my mouth shut on this long enough...and now here's what I think the situation is (and what it probably should be):

First of all, I think the legal ramifications of copyright depend on the jurisdictions of those who choose to syndicate the copy...however, on the basis of intellectual property law in Ontario and common sense, I believe that the person who owns the copyright is the person who initially wrote the content.

And here's where I think the law and technology part ways...no one has conclusively defined the intent of an RSS publisher, and I suspect it varies. Some of us (e.g. me) would offer an RSS feed as "read only" by default, and syndicated only by those sources that were preapproved and that that the author was aware of. Some of us couldn't care where our feed ended up. In other words, I think RSS copyright depends on intent, with a default setting of "yeah, go ahead and take and do what you want with it, just give me credit."

The US government has an interesting stance on the subject, in that they offer RSS feeds in a similar fashion to my intent via this page: http://www.copyright.gov/help/rss.html

Now...does that apply across the US? Or is this just a copyright.gov-specific thing?

Whenever I search for rss and copyright together I end up coming across this article by Sharon Housley. I think some of the article has been quoted earlier in the thread.

A couple of quotes from the article

RSS is commonly defined as really simple syndication. So, this means that any material contained in a feed is available for syndication, right? Well no, not exactly. It means that the content contained in an RSS feed is in a format that is syndication friendly, if the copyright holder allows for syndication. Offering a feed for syndication does not in fact grant any legal rights to anyone to reuse the feeds content beyond what the Copyright laws grant as Fair Use.

and

Most people publishing content via RSS support republication of feeds. Because the technology is fairly new, the laws and legalities are still murky. It is assumed that content in RSS is protected by copyright laws but let us not forget the Internet is global and their is not a centralized body governing what is right or what is wrong. Not only does law and technology collide the laws of different countries, those creating the feed and those displaying the contents of the feed may contradict each other. It is for this reason, I would advise that publishers using RSS to assume that the contents of their RSS feeds will be syndicated and replicated.

It may not seem like it from some of the things I've said here, but I do agree that the way it should work is you own the rights to your work unless and until you give those rights away.

But I keep wondering how realistic it's going to be to protect and enforce those rights. I think we all agree that there isn't any global governing body and the laws will be different in different places. So what happens when you publish in a country with strong copyright protection laws and someone in a country with lax laws republishes your content?

Which countries laws would apply? How would you in one country enforce the laws you operate under on a person in another country.

It's the issue of enforceability that makes me question the feasibility of the current laws. Something keeps nagging at me that the laws need to change to reflect the reality of the situation, but I'll be the first to admit I'm lost as to what those changes should be.

An analogy:
Here in Boulder pedestrians have the right of way always. If a person walks out in the street the traffic has to stop. So you could as a pedestrian just step into the street whenever you felt like it and have legal protection. The laws of physics tell me a 2000+ lb vehicle traveling at 30+ miles per hour is going to do a lot of damage to my body if the two collide. I'm still going to wait for the traffic to stop before stepping out to cross the road regardless of what the law says.

I guess I see the whole copyright issue in a similar way. I understand why copyright protection exists and I agree with it. But I don't think it's going to be possible to enforce that protection realistically.

I look at the situation like the last sentence in the second quote above. I'm going to assume if I publish something with an rss feed that someone else is going to replublish it. If I don't want that to happen I won't publish the feed. I'll live with both the pros and cons of the feed and do what I can to make the best of both.