Ethics RSS - Stealing Content or value added?

Displaying RSS feeds on your web site (aka "syndication") is an easy way to get an automatic flow of new content for the site. But is it ethical? There are two issues involved:

1) You are "hurting" the publisher of the content?

2) You are "hurting" parties?

(Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer present article shall not be considered legal advice.).

Since the content is playing someone else owns the copyright, # 1 is both a legal and an ethical issue. And not everyone agrees on the answer.

Since invented to RSS syndication, some argue that the publication of an RSS feed implicitly authorizes others to syndicate it. In most cases, if a union in a way which benefits the publisher, which seems to be a safe assumption.

Some generally accepted rules for syndication ethically include:

1. Syndication feed that does not expressly prohibit and to honor all requests to stop

2. Not the entire contents of syndication-feed full of content (display only excerpts from each element)

3. Always link to the original source of the content

4. connected in a way that is counted by search engines (do not use 'rel = "nofollow"' links or JavaScript)

5. cache the RSS feed on your server so you do not use the bandwidth of the publishing house to reload it every time someone loads the page (this speeds up your site too)

If you follow the rules 2, 3 and 4, is "paying" for the content of the publisher:

* Sending traffic to your site (you can make the link open in a new browser window, if you want)

* By giving them a boost in search engines, giving them in-bound links (this can also help you in the search engines like sites that link to related content)

What about others? Consider how syndication affects the search engines you are wasting their resources making index the duplicate content? Or syndicate so that adds value and helps them find the best content for their users?

Here are some ways to use the RSS feed content that add value:

1. Syndicating RSS feed items that have been hand picked for quality and relevance alongside valuable, relevant, original content.

2. Syndicating RSS feeds that have been hand picked for quality next to the original content. Since only the feed is harvested by hand, not every single element, the value is slightly less than # 1.

3. Syndicating content from research-based aggregator that ranks the quality of search results next to the original content (for example, using the results of research quality rankings of blogs as opposed to items listed in random order or time-based).

4. Aggregating hand-picked related items from multiple feeds (no original content).

5. Aggregating the most hand-picked on RSS feeds (no original content).

Anything less does not add value, wastes resources, and does not pass ethical muster. For example:

* Syndicating randomly selected RSS-related content alongside original content (regardless of the quality content RSS).

* Syndicating any RSS content alongside content of poor quality poor to get the content ranked higher.

* Syndication content strangers beside any content to get ranked higher content (which may function as a self-updating content increases the freshness of the page).

* The publishing pages of content made exclusively from a single RSS feed (no matter what the quality - is purely duplicate content).

* The pages of the publication produced only aggregates content from multiple feeds, regardless of quality (which brings together multiple sources of related content can be useful, but only if it has useful content).

Syndication is a great way to provide quality content to your site visitors. Just be sure to do ethically.