

Ask HN: Legality of RSS Feed Usage in Web Apps? - mstefff

I cannot seem to find a solid answer to this question, so where better to turn? I am in the middle of developing a web application that utilizes a number of RSS feeds from the leading sites in a given industry. Just to point out, these feeds are all partial feeds and usually nothing more than the title/link is displayed. About 90% of the websites providing the RSS feeds display some sort of disclaimer regarding the feeds: "for personal, non-commercial use by individuals only. The feeds are free of charge for use by individuals, as long as the feeds are used for such individual’s personal, non-commercial use."<p>Now I can't help but notice the endless amount of commercial (some form of advertising) websites that use RSS feeds from other sites, as well as web-based RSS readers which are basically profiting from the same thing.<p>So, what exactly is the legality here? Wouldn't these sites encourage commercial sites to utilize their feeds to direct traffic back to them?<p>Thanks..
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dpapathanasiou
I'm not a lawyer, but I had the same questions with my project and discovered
that you can aggregate feeds under the Safe Harbor Provisions of the DMCA
(<http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/512.html>) as long as:

(1) You stick to publicly-available feeds

(2) You don't edit the feed content

(3) You provide the feed owner a way to opt-out if he doesn't want you to
access his feed anymore

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mstefff
Thank you for the link, it's extremely helpful. I'm still sifting through
everything, but does this still allow for commercial usage of the feeds?

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dpapathanasiou
That's the extent of my knowledge; you should really find an attorney who
understands IP and explain your idea.

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mstefff
I'm just confused because I see so many sites that aggregate RSS feeds. It
seems like almost every site is doing it now - especially those sites like
popurls.com and alltop.com. I emailed a handful of the companies whose feeds I
am planning on using to see if they could elaborate a bit more. Thanks again.

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goofygrin
I've got a similar question.

Whenever a client tells me that they want an RSS feed I make sure that they
understand the ramifications. An RSS feed typically drives up bandwith and
drives down traffic. An RSS that includes full content is even worse since it
gives a nice easily scraped content source for content theft.

