racoma.com.phJ. Angelo Racoma on technology, economics, writing, problogging, and getting things done

Robert Scoble of Microsoft,
one of the more prominent personalities in the blogosphere, and in my
regular reading list, publishes (aside from his main blog) a “link blog” where he features aggregated posts by other bloggers that he deems re-post worthy.

Some people such as Diego Doval and Cristian Vidmar
(who have noteworthy academic, publication and/or professional
credentials) don’t like the concept of Scoble’s link blogging (whether
re-posting an entire article, or just parts thereof).  IMHO,
content aggregation such as Scoble’s Link blog are a good
great way to network and also generate traffic to one’s own blog. 
Assuming that citations are done accordingly, I believe that readers
would tend to likewise be interested in viewing (and ultimately linking) the original author’s blog for more
content.

And Scoble’s being an A-List blogger (or as what many consider him to
be–he’s an industry insider [as am I?], and according to Bloglines, he has about 5,574 subscribers, and that’s
not counting other RSS-aggregation services/software), I would consider
it an honor for him to read my articles, actually like one or two, and
then re-post a summary in Scoble’s link blog.

Or perhaps, this would be the point of view of a blogger who’s not as
accomplished as the three cited above.  But another perspecetive
is that if you publish online especially in blogs, and more especially if you publish an RSS feed, your content can and will
be cited and most likely in some form quoted.  It means your content is being read and most likely reacted on (whether liked or disliked, supported or disputed).  How content would should be treated is a matter
of explicitly stating one’s preferences for the republication or citing.  For instance, the J Spot is licensed under a Creative Commons  Deed Attribution/Share-alike 2.0, which entails that readers are free to:

• copy, distribute, display, and perform the work
• make derivative works
• make commercial use of the work

with the following conditions:

• Attribution. One must give the original author credit.
• Share Alike. If one alters, transforms, or builds upon the work, he/she may distribute the resulting work only under an identical license.

As Tim Marman contends, commenting on Scoble’s RSS advocacy (which has come to be an advocacy of mine also), “[j]ust because you publish something in a format that facilitates reuse
doesn’t mean you should be forced to relinquish all control over it.” 
Hence, it is important of explicitly stating one’s preferences for
citation, copying, distribution, display, make of derivatives, and
other such acts.

In the end, it all boils down to ethics in publishing and
communications.  It is polite and professional to review authors’
preferences and copyright statements, and to take the marginal extra
effort to at least email an author seeking permission to cite or
re-post if so needed.  And it is also polite and professional to
likewise communicate one’s agreement or disagreement in a firm, but
agreeable manner.  After all, one can disagree without being
disagreeable.

Insightful discussions, nonetheless.

My 0.02.

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