Tuesday, February 08, 2005
As Bill Clinton Might Say...
...it depends on what your definition of "license" is. From the Ask Jeeves/Bloglines FAQ, Will there be any changes to the treatment of feeds and blogs posted to the service?: "Bloglines, like any aggregator, requires a license to display, distribute and promote the feeds we serve and the content you post — otherwise, we could not provide this service. Bloglines' license is for the purpose of displaying, distributing and promoting your content in connection with the service. That's it. Users will retain the copyright to the content they post."
Hmm. Well, not every blog aggregated by Bloglines registered with the site or accepted its terms of service. I presume that some (many) are there simply because users have added the feed. This is true of other aggregators too. So, is Bloglines saying it's relying on other licensing (like Creative Commons) for its authority? If so, it's got a fairly involved job on its hands making sure the specific terms of those licenses are honored. And/or is it trying to rely on something else?
Who's got a license-free blog and never registered with Bloglines? Are you included?
[Update:] Marty Schwimmer: "Offer a choice to bloggers."
[Update:] And a bit of table-turning.
Unless otherwise expressly stated, all original material of whatever nature created by Denise M. Howell and included in the Bag and Baggage weblog and any related pages, including the weblog's archives, is licensed under a Creative Commons License.