It’s not like one person was reading a feed. The feed didn’t contain my ads either. After that I switched to a partial feed but once I switched to WordPress, the full feed came back again.

Yes, I meant THAT interest I’ll just comment on your blog so we can continue the convo there! ^0^/

——————————–

I have to say though, I have to take back what I said about feeds generating duplicate content (with regards to search engine spiders) because feeds don’t get crawled. I think I got confused too.

About that, I meant LJ RSS feeds. At least I think that’s the case, not sure though. But those published RSS feeds on public domains could be crawled by spiders, just thought I should clear what I said.

As for to click or not to click…I myself rarely click through to a blog; when I do it’s because there’s additional content I want to access or I want to leave a comment. For me, it really makes no difference whether I’m reading it in my standalone RSS reader, my browser’s RSS reader, a LiveJournal syndicated feed, or any other method. But I’m sure everyone has their own habits.

But without hard numbers, I’m still skeptical that an RSS feed syndicated on X or Y blog site draws significantly more traffic away from the original site than having an RSS feed available, period. (You may have noticed that the syndicated version of Deb’s feed on LiveJournal only had one subscribed reader…)

Keep in mind, after all: an RSS feed is a tool that the blog writer can *choose* to make available to the public. So I find it hard to blame the public when it uses the tool however it wants to in the end…as long as they aren’t actively trying to take credit for my work, which as I’ve noted before would be very hard to do with LiveJournal’s syndication methods (though I’m sure there are other sites where it’s easier to be unscrupulous).

…Anyway. When you say “interest” I’m guessing you mean anime and manga? It’s been a hobby of mine for ages and I’ve been working on making it a career since I got my foot in the door with a job earlier this year (Unfortunately I was laid off– hence my being a full-time freelancer now!) Always nice to meet another fan ^_^

Reading all the comments, I think a lot of people got this whole thing confused. It’s not actually about plagiarism itself but the issue of RSS feeds “stealing” content (“stealing” is in quotes because it’s not really stealing per se). When people syndicate your blog, they don’t copy and paste the content to their web sites manually. If Deb would ask, perhaps LJ would tell the user to remove the feed, but they won’t see it as an offense because they’re the ones who included the feature to their web site in the first place.

@gia
Hi gia, It’s just my opinion, but if it were me reading LJ RSS feeds on a browser, that’s when I’ll get lazy to go to the actual web site (I speak from experience). Whereas if I were reading on stand-alone RSS readers, I’d feel compelled to surf over. But as I said, that’s just me.

I have to say though, I have to take back what I said about feeds generating duplicate content (with regards to search engine spiders) because feeds don’t get crawled. I think I got confused too.

BTW, nice meeting someone of the same interest, here, gia. I’ll comment on your blog later.

@Mariella: My point is that people reading from a feed on LiveJournal are not necessarily less likely to click through than people reading the feed in their personal readers. (In fact, LJers may be *more* likely than some individuals; some stand-alone RSS readers don’t have a built-in browser, where as LJers have to be at a browser by default.)

@Deb: I think the part I keep having trouble with is that you say this girl posted to her blog, which is different from running a syndicated feed on LiveJournal. Here’s an example of one of my syndicated feeds on LJ:

http://giapetanime.livejournal.com/

I’m the one who requested it be created, so I was able to give it a username that clearly credits me, though most people assign a pretty descriptive name to feeds (like “candicomics,” “PennyArcadeRSS,” “sinfestfeed,” etc). At this point, no one can edit any of the content or anything else to do with that account, including me (unless I contact LiveJournal personally). Now, here’s an example of a post in a syndicated feed:

http://syndicated.livejournal.com/giapetanime/81921.html

As you can see, the FIRST thing that appears in the main entry is a link to the original post. There are also tags at the bottom that link back to my site as well. And like with any RSS feed, it will cut off if I put a MORE tag in, in case I want to force my readers to visit my site.

I only have 10 readers on LJ, but that’s still 10 I might not have otherwise– and they’re notified every time I update, like anyone else using an RSS feed.

They can comment on the posts on LJ but they’ll only access the other LJ readers, so they always click over to my site if they want to comment. And if they don’t want to comment or see the remainder of the content, it wouldn’t make the least bit of difference whether they were seeing the feed in an individual reader or on LiveJournal– they either will click or they won’t.

Obviously it’s a personal preference; in my case, I prefer my content to have the maximum reach possible. Ads and click-throughs and the like are secondary in my mind.

And of course, this is VERY different from someone copying and pasting content from someone else’s blog directly into their *own* (as opposed to an account they can’t actually touch). I’m still unclear as to which this girl was actually doing.

I DID see that there is a syndicated feed of Deb’s content, however. Here’s an example post from it:

http://syndicated.livejournal.com/fwriting_jobs/43446.html

Again, the first two links are the FeedBurner and then direct link to the original content, and the username comes directly from this site’s name, and the buy-me-a-coffee link even comes through. If Deb doesn’t like it I’m sure LiveJournal would take it down at her request, but honestly: other than multiple people being able to “friend” it, what is the difference between reading it there and reading it in a personal reader?

My degree is in Radio-TV and part of my internship many years ago was clearing the teletype wires. I spent 13 years in newspapers. AP/UPI, business wire and PR newswire are all paid for.

If a TV station mentions anything from a newspaper, the newspaper is credit as a source and the TV station can do no more than the highlights due to time constraints. A transcription of a 30-minute news program (24 after commercials) won’t even fill the front page of a daily newspaper.

The entire TV news business seems to be based on lifting ideas and stories from newspapers (through AP and UPI).”

TV stations do not lift stories/ideas from newspapers (that would be illegal). TV stations (and newspapers) pay a hefty fee to subscribe to AP and other news feeds. This allows TV stations, newspapers, etc. to legally use the stories that come across the feed. Not every station/paper can have a reporter in Iraq, so the AP sends one and then they charge everyone else to use their story. Usually, TV and radio stations will rewrite the story to fit their medium, and it is not required to follow each story with a “This story supplied by report John Doe with the AP.” Newspapers are obviously different since its easy to print the reporters name. Even spoken quotes work differently in TV/radio than in print. I can keep going on as to how this works, but reputable TV stations (pretty much the ones you watch at 5 o’clock) do not rip stories from newspapers.

With regards to Deb’s situation, if Miss LJ wants to pay Deb to post her entire site on LJ, this discussion would probably go in a completely new direction.

Item on CNBC this am about theft of copyright material and cost to U.S. economy — $58 billion ot million (didn’t catch report, just promo for it).

Deb always responds to my emails. Sometimes they’re late but she always responds. Maybe it’s your delivery?

Am RSS Feed is to feed to an individual subscriber, not entire communities. Using an RSS feed for personal use is not indeed not plagiarism, using one to take my content and post it on your blog, is.

Deb

I use LiveJournal as my feed reader. If you visit my friends page you’ll see feeds from dozens of different places. It keeps ME from having to visit 20 sites everyday. All the info comes to the one place. If my friends want to read what I’m reading, more power to them.

Placing an RSS feed is not plagiarism. It’s not theft. If you don’t want people to use your feed, you turn off the option.

Deb, I’ll tell you what I told that distinguished panel, it is never going to stop, and if you can’t deal with it, then get out of the business.

BTW You never respond to e-mail, but seem to still want our sympathy on this issue. Sorry, I don’t follow that logic. Why should we care?

This makes me both angry and sad. The problem’s bad enough here where several of the local professors will give you a zero if accreditation is there but done incorrectly. Believe me, I know. It’s something I triple checked before handing in papers out of fear for my GPA. I was class of 2004, so it hasn’t been that long.

I can’t imagine schools, whether high schools or colleges, letting their students get away with stealing so blatantly. No wonder Craigslist Curmudgeon keeps finding ads asking people to write college admissions essays and term paper mills. Kids used to have to be sneaky if they wanted to hire (or threaten) someone into doing their homework for them. It almost seems it’s the norm nowadays.

Shameful.