Blogburst Update

Previously, I posted about the backlash to Pluck’s Blogburst service, which is designed to help bloggers get their entries places into "top-tier" mainstream media destinations such as the San Francisco Gate and The Washington Post.

Earlier this week, I received an email from Eric Newman of Pluck, in which he addressed two of the major concerns that the article raise.

First, he announced that Blogburst has released an update to its software called "BlogBurst Photo Proxy". The service caches images found in blog posts and uses the cache to display the image on any sites that reuse the article. This should eliminate often-derided image hotlinking problem that caused bloggers and their hosts to spend bandwidth feeding images to the sites that reused their work.

Second, he informed me that they are working on a new draft of their contributor agreement, which should be ready for review sometime next week. He’s offered myself and other critics of Blogburst the chance to review the draft of it and offer feedback. Once I’ve had time to review it and discuss any concerns and questions that I have with Pluck, I’ll report back on any changes and thoughts I have.

Finally, he invited Plagiarism Today to rejoin BlogBurst to "keep honest tabs" on the service. While I have no personal problem being the canary in the mine, so to speak, I’m not sure how much good I would be able to do. As I said in my previous entry, I was only reused once during the months I was a member and not by a significant site. I saw little about the service, good or bad.

So I open the issue up for debate. Does the potential good outweigh the potential harm?

[tags]Copyright Infringement, Content Theft, Blogburst, Pluck[/tags]