- Article Updated – See Below -
Six Apart was one of the first rock stars of the blogging world. Propelled to fame on the back of its Movable Type blogging platform, it quickly became one of the most recognized names in the blogging world.
Though Movable Type has largely been replaced by newer blogging applications, including WordPress, Six Apart has remained very active in the blogging world, not only offering Typepad, a popular blogging service, but also purchasing several other blogging comapnies, including LiveJournal and Rojo.
However, some of these subsidaries have begun engaging in practices that many bloggers consider unethical. One of the sites under Six Apart’s control even engages in behavior akin to Bitacle.
This has left some to wonder why Six Apart, a company largely respected in the Blogging world, has begun to play fast and loose with RSS feeds and copyrighted content. Worse still, why have they begun using tactics largely reserved for spam bloggers?
Sadly, the answers are not very clear.
LiveJournal Syndication
The least worrisome of Six Apart’s scraping activities revolves around their LiveJournal service. There, paid members can take advantage of their “Syndication” feature. It allows users to select an RSS feed and LiveJournal then creates a specialized page for the feed. The feed can then be added as a “friend”, the same as if it were an actual LiveJournal member, and can appear in friend lists.
The Syndication feature is worrisome because it creates an “account” with duplicate content from the feed. The site displays the entire contents of the feed (see sample using Neil Gaiman’s Journal) and allows users to post comments without returning to the original site.
However, with the LiveJournal Syndication service, attribution is very clear and all synidcated accounts are on a separate subdomain (syndicated.livejournal.com). Also, the LiveJournal team has, historically, been very responsive about removing feeds that their owners don’t want to be scraped. Furthermore, results from the Syndication service do not appear in Google eliminating most of the major concers one has with scraping.
Still, many bloggers are likely to be concerned that a duplicate of their blog exists, that users can and do comment to it and that LiveJournal users no longer need to subscribde to the feed directly or visit their site.
Rojo Front Page
When Six Apart aquired RSS reader Rojo in September 2006, it also aquired some of Rojo’s bad habits.
Rojo’s home page functions almost exactly like a rapidly-updating spam blog. It features the full content of the most popular feed items of the day, all next to Google Adsense ads (see screenshot above). The site is then further sub-divided into new categories, including “politics” “Web 2.0″, etc., it is also possible to view the original feed on Rojo without visiting the original site (see PTs feed on Rojo) and those feeds are also surrounded by ads.
Attribution on Rojo is prominent and the headlines do link back to the original story. However a “Rojolink” feature encourages others to use the Rojo permalink for the article rather than link to the original site.
At the very least, Jason Calacanis will likely be upset by this. He has repeatedly stated that he will not allow his full feeds to be placed next to ads, something that Rojo does.
Though most people expect RSS readers to make money off of other people’s content, generally it is also expected that they will add value to the feed by making it easier for people to subscribe. Instead, Rojo has just created a valueless duplicate of the feeds, and surrounded the content with ads.
All The Nooz
Worst of all Six Apart’s properties though is the Rojo-owned site Nooz.com. Nooz is designed to function like Digg for Myspace. Nooz users pick articles from the Web, vote on them and add them to their special Nooz widgets that they they place on their Myspace profiles.
The problem with Nooz, however, is not the widgets but the way the content is obtained. Rather than letting users select their own articles from the Web, like Digg or Reddit, Nooz forces users to select from versions of the blog that it has scraped and reposted on its own site (see Plagiarism Today on Nooz). Once again, as with Rojo itself, Nooz offers “Noozlinks” to encourage people to link to Nooz’s scraped copy, rather than the original.
Though no ads appear on Nooz at this time, Nooz.com is accessible by the search engines, Google estimates that about 150,000 pages have been indexed already. Even worse, all of the contact addresses for Nooz, including the copyright agent, all bounced back.
Nooz is not only scraping and reposting feeds without permission, but it is being irresponsible in doing so. There is no means to ask Nooz to stop reusing the content.
If you don’t like the way Nooz uses your content, quite frankly, you are out of luck at the moment.
A Murmured Outcry
Six Apart is no stranger to blogging, as discussed above, they helped ignite the blogging movement with their software. They are not unfamiliar with the ettiquite of blogging and should realize, at least on some level, that some bloggers will not ba happy to see their feeds scraped and republished on someone else’s site, all the while surrounded by ads.
The reasons Six Apart allows this to continue are dubious at best. Legal scholars have already agreed that there is no implied license with RSS feeds, this use, as long as it is executed without permission, is basically copyright infringement. Unless a CC license or a direct agreements permits the use, what Six Apart is doing in all three cases is, most likely, illegal.
To my knowledge, no one has complained about these three uses for the following reasons. Why is a mystery, but the reasons may include the following:
- Very few people seem to be affected by the LiveJournal Syndication feature. Since only paid members can take advantage of it, severely limiting the pool, only very large blogs are scraped. Also, LiveJournal has been very cooperative in removing people that don’t want to participate. Furthermore, since the Syndicated blogs are not picked up by search engines, it’s unlikely most bloggers know that they exist.
- Few bloggers want to upset Rojo since many readers use the feed reader service to subscribe to blogs. Currently, about 5% of all Plagiarsim Today subscribers use Rojo.
- Nooz seems to have flown under the radar, targeted mostly at Myspace users, generally a separate group from bloggers, and still a relatively new creation (its current incarnation starting some time this year).
No matter the reasons though, these issues are not going away. RSS scraping and reuse issues will likely be around for a very long time, that is, until a licensing scheme emerges that resolves the issue once and for all.
Conclusions
What Six Apart is doing is wrong. Though I have no major issues with their use of my content, save perhaps on Rojo where the use is more commercial (and thus a violation of my Creative Commons License), Six Apart is taking content from thousands of blogs, without permission, and reposting them on various sites. That is copyright infringement and there is little way around that.
Though some might argue that Six Apart’s scraping would qualify for protection under the DMCA (section 512(b)) protection for caching services. However, as discussed earlier, that is not likely the case.
All of Sixapart’s sites modify the content and create permanent files, both violations of the caching provision. It also does not follow accepted practices (as there are no accepted practices for scraping and republishing RSS feeds) and it is not automated, seemingly relying at every step on users to submit the original feed.
It is unlikely, at best, that Six Apart would obtain the same kind of protection that was afforded the Google Cache, especially considering both the commercial nature of the use and the apparent intent of setting up the copy as a substitute for the original. The latter is shown by the new permalinks and location of cached material (placed before the link to the original).
Six Apart desperately needs to look at its policy for reusing others content. In that regard, it should look toward sites such as Digg and Reddit that have built great communities without infringing on copyright.
In short, there’s no reason for a social news site to scrape and repost content like Rojo and Nooz currently do. Links and snippets are perfectly adequate.
When it’s all said and done, Six Apart seems to have nothing to gain by scraping and reposting content as it does. Successful news sites have, for a very long time, worked well with content creators and there seems to be no reason for Six Apart to try and change that, especially in a way that is both legally dubious and likely to cause outrage.
Hopefully they will reevaluate their policies soon and come up with a more fair approach to its sites. In the meantime, they are treading on very thin legal ice and dealing with a very wary public.
Hat tip: Thanks to Cybele of Typetive for the heads up about Nooz.com
Note: During the course of writing this article, which started Thursday, I made several attempts to contact Six Apart by both email and phone. I was able to get in touch with Jane Anderson, Six Apart’s press contact. We scheduled a time for an interview on Monday but, when I called in there was no answer. Subsequent attempts to contact Six Apart via both office phone and cell phone have produced no answer. I will update this article when and if I get further information from them.
Update: I’ve gotten back in touch with Jane Anderson, she is speaking with her counterparts at Six Apart and will be back in touch with me soon. They have scheduled a meeting for tomorrow to discuss these issues. I will report back after I hear from them.
Daniel: Glad to hear that this was resolved to your satisfaction! Let me know if I can help in any way in the future!
Hey guys,
I have some great (actually, unbelievable) news. Rojo has changed their position! Now, if you go back to that same link it not only provides the name of my website, but also changed its appearance to only show links back to my website! I don’t know who to thank for this! Jonathan, did you have something to do with it?
Thanks so much, guys!
Hey guys,
I have some great (actually, unbelievable) news. Rojo has changed their position! Now, if you go back to that same link it not only provides the name of my website, but also changed its appearance to only show links back to my website! I don't know who to thank for this! Jonathan, did you have something to do with it?
Thanks so much, guys!
Cybele and Jonathan -
I actually got the feeling that the email that I got from them is to a certain extent mocking, if not even defying. Primarily because (1) my blog is so insignificant in the grand scheme of things, and (2) it seems like they are hoping that I give up by making me go through this whole process of authenticating who I am, digital signatures, etc.
I almost feel like going through with it just out of principle now.
Daniel: I got the email and will be in touch in a few days with my thoughts on it. I am way behind on my email right now so give me some time to catch up
Cybele: Have you posted those screenshots anywhere? I’d like to see them if you have. I’ve had some first hand experience with these sites but I don’t think I’ve seen those images, at least not in quite some time.
Mr. Vail and I have exchanged quite a few emails in the past. In my case I was not attributed properly (the Nooz site originally had no links back … just scraped content) and the advertising was all over the place. I filed a DMCA notice with Adsense, who suspended their account. About 30 days later Six Apart filed a counter suit and had their account reinstituted. At that time my content was in fact gone from the original urls … and was not appearing in its entirety with new URLs. I filed a second DMCA request and had their account suspended again. Basically, my content wasn’t removed until August 2007. (And shortly after that Rojo experienced a complete crash after that horrible power outage and my material disappeared for good.)
My guess in your case, Daniel, is that your feed has a formatting error that keeps the title from being associated with it, so it’s not being pulled onto Rojo.
Also, since you’re not using a feed service like Feedburner, you may be able to block Rojo directly from pulling your feed. At least you could put some htaccess notes on your server and not allow your photos to be displayed there (or change them to something that says that Rojo is swiping your content, if you wish, this is the awesomeness of htaccess).
I do have screen grabs of the Nooz site from last March as they were displaying my content.
As far as I know neither site has my material on it (though I’ve caught my feed on Rojo a couple of times since then, but since they have no advertising, I’m not as troubled by it). Regardless, if you ask them to stop, they should stop. Heaven knows that they have the capability to stop pulling a feed … I think I’ve proven that. (Even if their capabilities aren’t stellar.)
Cybele – indeed, that was Chris Vail who emailed me on this matter. I realize that your case was a bit different than mine, but just for the comparison, do you still have the link to Nooz’s page? Here is the link for Rojo’s version of my blog. I tried searching for my website in their search engine, and I was unable to; see if your websites show up, or check your referral stats for Rojo.
Jonathan, I will forward that email to you. Any help or suggestions would be appreciated.
Cybele and Jonathan -
I actually got the feeling that the email that I got from them is to a certain extent mocking, if not even defying. Primarily because (1) my blog is so insignificant in the grand scheme of things, and (2) it seems like they are hoping that I give up by making me go through this whole process of authenticating who I am, digital signatures, etc.
I almost feel like going through with it just out of principle now.
Daniel: I got the email and will be in touch in a few days with my thoughts on it. I am way behind on my email right now so give me some time to catch up
Cybele: Have you posted those screenshots anywhere? I'd like to see them if you have. I've had some first hand experience with these sites but I don't think I've seen those images, at least not in quite some time.
Mr. Vail and I have exchanged quite a few emails in the past. In my case I was not attributed properly (the Nooz site originally had no links back … just scraped content) and the advertising was all over the place. I filed a DMCA notice with Adsense, who suspended their account. About 30 days later Six Apart filed a counter suit and had their account reinstituted. At that time my content was in fact gone from the original urls … and was not appearing in its entirety with new URLs. I filed a second DMCA request and had their account suspended again. Basically, my content wasn't removed until August 2007. (And shortly after that Rojo experienced a complete crash after that horrible power outage and my material disappeared for good.)
My guess in your case, Daniel, is that your feed has a formatting error that keeps the title from being associated with it, so it's not being pulled onto Rojo.
Also, since you're not using a feed service like Feedburner, you may be able to block Rojo directly from pulling your feed. At least you could put some htaccess notes on your server and not allow your photos to be displayed there (or change them to something that says that Rojo is swiping your content, if you wish, this is the awesomeness of htaccess).
I do have screen grabs of the Nooz site from last March as they were displaying my content.
As far as I know neither site has my material on it (though I've caught my feed on Rojo a couple of times since then, but since they have no advertising, I'm not as troubled by it). Regardless, if you ask them to stop, they should stop. Heaven knows that they have the capability to stop pulling a feed … I think I've proven that. (Even if their capabilities aren't stellar.)
Cybele – indeed, that was Chris Vail who emailed me on this matter. I realize that your case was a bit different than mine, but just for the comparison, do you still have the link to Nooz's page? Here is the link for Rojo's version of my blog. I tried searching for my website in their search engine, and I was unable to; see if your websites show up, or check your referral stats for Rojo.
Jonathan, I will forward that email to you. Any help or suggestions would be appreciated.
Daniel: I am a bit stunned to hear a lawyer make such an argument. I’ve spoken with many copyright attorneys on the issue of RSS scraping and republishing and there seems to be a huge consensus that sending content out via RSS is not an implied license to scrape and republish.
If you get a chance, could you forward that letter on to me? My email is jonathan at plagiarismtoday dot com. I’d like to have a look at it. Perhaps so I can respond to it or write and ask my own questions.
Cybele: Thank you for jumping in and helping with this one!
Daniel – was that Chris Vail who sent you the email, by chance?
My original upset with Rojo (more specifically by their subsite called Nooz) was the use of the content, without attribution, with lots and lots of ads all over it. I have no problem with aggregators (I use them myself), but I don’t think that someone else should be making money off of my content.
Daniel: I am a bit stunned to hear a lawyer make such an argument. I've spoken with many copyright attorneys on the issue of RSS scraping and republishing and there seems to be a huge consensus that sending content out via RSS is not an implied license to scrape and republish.
If you get a chance, could you forward that letter on to me? My email is jonathan at plagiarismtoday dot com. I'd like to have a look at it. Perhaps so I can respond to it or write and ask my own questions.
Cybele: Thank you for jumping in and helping with this one!
I actually received a response from General Council of Six Apart after I had contacted them with a request to remove me from Rojo.com. Here is what he wrote me:
“Thank you for contacting Six Apart about content from your Web site appearing in the Rojo feed aggregation service. We will be happy to remove the content once you provide us with the required notice under the Copyright Act confirming that you are in fact the owner of the content. You can find a detailed description of the notice requirements and a step-by-step explanation of the takedown process at http://www.sixapart.com/general-terms/ – scroll down to Section 17 “Notification of Copyright Infringement”. You may send the completed notice directly to me.
Looking at your Web site, I see that you have enabled RSS syndication of both your blog posts and comments. If you do not wish to have content from your Web site syndicated through feed aggregators such as Rojo, Google Reader, My Yahoo!, etc., you may wish to disable the RSS feeds.”
Personally, I wouldn’t have a problem with my stuff being there, as long as there would be a link back to my website. Currently, there is no acknowledgment for the author of the material that is being re-published. To me, that seems sketchy.
I actually received a response from General Council of Six Apart after I had contacted them with a request to remove me from Rojo.com. Here is what he wrote me:
“Thank you for contacting Six Apart about content from your Web site appearing in the Rojo feed aggregation service. We will be happy to remove the content once you provide us with the required notice under the Copyright Act confirming that you are in fact the owner of the content. You can find a detailed description of the notice requirements and a step-by-step explanation of the takedown process at http://www.sixapart.com/general-terms/ – scroll down to Section 17 “Notification of Copyright Infringement”. You may send the completed notice directly to me.
Looking at your Web site, I see that you have enabled RSS syndication of both your blog posts and comments. If you do not wish to have content from your Web site syndicated through feed aggregators such as Rojo, Google Reader, My Yahoo!, etc., you may wish to disable the RSS feeds.”
Personally, I wouldn’t have a problem with my stuff being there, as long as there would be a link back to my website. Currently, there is no acknowledgment for the author of the material that is being re-published. To me, that seems sketchy.
Daniel – was that Chris Vail who sent you the email, by chance?
My original upset with Rojo (more specifically by their subsite called Nooz) was the use of the content, without attribution, with lots and lots of ads all over it. I have no problem with aggregators (I use them myself), but I don't think that someone else should be making money off of my content.
Other,
Once again, you are not reading the previous entry that I linked to in the above comment or listening to the podcast regarding RSS scraping and implied license.
You don’t have to listen to me at all, listen to what lawyers that are experts on copyright law and the Web have to say.
The law is clear. Just because you don’t like the facts does not mean that changing wording fixes them.
You are right, I’m not taking you seriously.
“All of Sixapart’s sites modify the content and create permanent files.” Whatever man, LiveJournal’s syndication cache is very short lived. Permanent files? Please. I’m sorry if I didn’t take your very studied knowledge seriously.
Read your article again but replace “scraped” and “reposted” with the more accurate “aggregated” and “blog” with the more accurate “rss feed” and you’ll see the silliness. “Six Apart is aggregating content from thousands of rss feeds, without permission, on various sites.” Umm, okay.
I guess the sad thing about livejournal’s feed is that I normally would have mocked you there instead of here.
Other,
Once again, READ the post in its entirety and READ the links in my comment above. I am very studied in the history of RSS, its intended usage and the legal ramifications of abusing it. Just because the truth and the history does not fit what you believe it should, does not mean I am the one who does not understand it.
Take a moment, read the post, the one I linked to and LISTEN to the podcast I linked to in this post. THEN comment.
lol. People are aggregating rss feeds!! Oh my god, they are actually using rss the way it is intended!
Seriously dude, don’t use the technology if you don’t understand it.
Other,
Once again, you are not reading the previous entry that I linked to in the above comment or listening to the podcast regarding RSS scraping and implied license.
You don't have to listen to me at all, listen to what lawyers that are experts on copyright law and the Web have to say.
The law is clear. Just because you don't like the facts does not mean that changing wording fixes them.
You are right, I'm not taking you seriously. "All of Sixapart’s sites modify the content and create permanent files." Whatever man, LiveJournal's syndication cache is very short lived. Permanent files? Please. I'm sorry if I didn't take your very studied knowledge seriously. Read your article again but replace "scraped" and "reposted" with the more accurate "aggregated" and "blog" with the more accurate "rss feed" and you'll see the silliness. "Six Apart is aggregating content from thousands of rss feeds, without permission, on various sites." Umm, okay.I guess the sad thing about livejournal's feed is that I normally would have mocked you there instead of here.
Other,Once again, READ the post in its entirety and READ the links in my comment above. I am very studied in the history of RSS, its intended usage and the legal ramifications of abusing it. Just because the truth and the history does not fit what you believe it should, does not mean I am the one who does not understand it.Take a moment, read the post, the one I linked to and LISTEN to the podcast I linked to in this post. THEN comment.
lol. People are aggregating rss feeds!! Oh my god, they are actually using rss the way it is intended! Seriously dude, don't use the technology if you don't understand it.
Matthew – I don’t know how you can say that writers who publish an RSS feed shouldn’t be upset when their feed is taken and republished without any attribution or linking. (That was my complaint with the Nooz site.)
Syndication as a concept has been around for hundreds of years and either you pay to publish it under your own masthead or your attribute it to the source. You don’t take it and say that you wrote it or that no one wrote it … that’s not syndication, that’s plagiarism.
I can’t believe you are serious.
Matthew,
I don’t think that you read the entire article, or, if you did, that you listened to the podcast that I linked to. You’ll find that lawyers very familiar with these issues disagree strongly with you.
Also, I would encourage you to read this article on this site:
http://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2006/08/29/why-r…
It might clear up some of the misconceptions you have regarding the intent of RSS feeds and the legality of scraping them.
Matthew,
I don’t think that you read the entire article, or, if you did, that you listened to the podcast that I linked to. You’ll find that lawyers very familiar with these issues disagree strongly with you.
Also, I would encourage you to read this article on this site:
http://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2006/08/29/why-rss-scraping-isnt-ok/
It might clear up some of the misconceptions you have regarding the intent of RSS feeds and the legality of scraping them.
The purpose of providing an RSS feed is for others to be able to display it on their own Web sites. For that use of a feed to be viewed as in any way abusive or even conceivably a copyright violation, is ridiculous.
Come on, guys – Six Apart is guilty of a lot of bad things, but “they use RSS feeds as RSS feeds are designed to be used, oh noes!” shouldn’t be the first and biggest complaint. That is not in any way an “issue” that needs to be resolved.
Matthew – I don't know how you can say that writers who publish an RSS feed shouldn't be upset when their feed is taken and republished without any attribution or linking. (That was my complaint with the Nooz site.) Syndication as a concept has been around for hundreds of years and either you pay to publish it under your own masthead or your attribute it to the source. You don't take it and say that you wrote it or that no one wrote it … that's not syndication, that's plagiarism.
I can't believe you are serious.
The purpose of providing an RSS feed is for others to be able to display it on their own Web sites. For that use of a feed to be viewed as in any way abusive or even conceivably a copyright violation, is ridiculous.Come on, guys – Six Apart is guilty of a lot of bad things, but "they use RSS feeds as RSS feeds are designed to be used, oh noes!" shouldn't be the first and biggest complaint. That is not in any way an "issue" that needs to be resolved.
I wrote angrily about Rojo.com a while back:
http://elliottback.com/wp/archives/2007/02/27/r…
I never got any kind of response from the email I sent them, and the telephone numbers in their WHOIS didn’t work.
I wrote angrily about Rojo.com a while back:
http://elliottback.com/wp/archives/2007/02/27/rojo-spam-splog/
I never got any kind of response from the email I sent them, and the telephone numbers in their WHOIS didn’t work.
And here I am trying to get my PR back up to what it used to be before I changed DOmains. SHoot!
I guess I add these three sites to my antileech plugin.
*.livejournal.com 204.9.177.18
*.nooz.com 38.102.128.146
*.rojo.com Sam IP as nooz.com (Hmm go figure?)
And here I am trying to get my PR back up to what it used to be before I changed DOmains. SHoot!
I guess I add these three sites to my antileech plugin.
*.livejournal.com 204.9.177.18
*.nooz.com 38.102.128.146
*.rojo.com Sam IP as nooz.com (Hmm go figure?)
To date I’ve seen no reply from Nooz/Rojo from my attempts to contact them and have my content removed from Nooz. They’ve mirrored an entire year’s worth of posts on their site and it does show in Google (they also scrape my photos and repost/host them). Since there’s no attribution not only is my text lost without any link back to my site, the original photos I create are also gone.
I’m sorry to hear that Six Apart has been unresponsive. I would have expected better from them.
To date I've seen no reply from Nooz/Rojo from my attempts to contact them and have my content removed from Nooz. They've mirrored an entire year's worth of posts on their site and it does show in Google (they also scrape my photos and repost/host them). Since there's no attribution not only is my text lost without any link back to my site, the original photos I create are also gone. I'm sorry to hear that Six Apart has been unresponsive. I would have expected better from them.