{"id":1704,"date":"2008-07-23T17:54:04","date_gmt":"2008-07-23T23:54:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sequence-inc.com\/fraudfiles\/?p=1704"},"modified":"2009-01-15T15:15:39","modified_gmt":"2009-01-15T21:15:39","slug":"the-blog-net-news-controversy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/the-blog-net-news-controversy\/","title":{"rendered":"The Blog Net News controversy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Several months ago, I stumbled on Blog Net News (BNN)<\/a> and liked what I saw. The site has different \u201cchannels\u201d that focus on geographic areas or certain topics. Each channel aggregates the RSS feeds of various bloggers.<\/p>\n

For those who aren\u2019t tech types, an \u201cRSS feed\u201d is basically an automated tool that sends out the title and first couple sentences of each post that I make on this blog. An \u201caggregator\u201d assembles the feeds of several different bloggers into one site or page.<\/p>\n

After trading some emails with David Mastio, the owner of BNN, he created the Accounting channel<\/a> and the Fraud channel<\/a>, both of which I edit. I helped David comb the internet for good blogs to be included on the site, and I’ve gotten notes from bloggers who noticed new traffic and wanted to thank me. What do visitors see when they visit BNN? They see the blog\u2019s name, the title of the most recent blog post(s) done on the blog, and a short excerpt of the post. The reader can click on the blog name and get a list of the posts in that blog\u2019s feed. Or the reader can click on the title of the post to go directly to the source blog. The only way to read the whole post by the blogger is to actually go to the blogger\u2019s site.<\/p>\n

Where\u2019s the controversy?<\/a> Some bloggers have asked to be excluded from the site. On several of the channels, David has allowed bloggers to opt-out. On channels that have a political focus, however, he does not allow them to opt-out. His goal is to have wide inclusion of viewpoints on those political channels, so he feels it\u2019s best to keep all blogs in.<\/p>\n

Those who have asked to be excluded from BNN seem to make a reasonable request. On the other hand, I don\u2019t see why they would object to what BNN is doing. The site is no different than a site like Technorati or Google, both of which use technology to comb through websites and catalog the results on their sites.<\/p>\n

Some bloggers have suggested that David is stealing their content. I disagree.<\/a> Using short excerpts from other sites is a common practice by bloggers far and wide, and so long as there is attribution of the material, I don\u2019t find that objectionable. I quote other sites all the time, and I link back to them, just as BNN does with the excerpts it publishes.<\/p>\n

I don’t know whether any of this falls under the legal term “Fair Use” or not. All I know is that sites quote other sites all the time, and there are plenty of indexes and search engines that use excerpts of my content and provide links back to my site.<\/p>\n

What I would<\/strong> have a problem with is using entire posts from bloggers on BNN. That’s not<\/strong> what David does on BNN. And no, I don\u2019t think the blogger who has been writing posts of 50 words or less to \u201cprove\u201d BNN is stealing entire posts has a leg to stand on. That\u2019s just silly.
\n<\/em>
\nI like the BNN sites. I don\u2019t know why a few bloggers are making such a fuss about it. Have they tried to get Google to stop indexing their pages? After all, Google shows a couple sentences in its search results. Using their logic, doesn\u2019t that mean Google is stealing too?<\/p>\n

The fact that BNN is set up to force readers to go to the bloggers\u2019 sites<\/strong> means that bloggers are likely getting traffic from BNN, not the other way around. Why complain about more traffic and exposure?<\/p>\n

David isn\u2019t using anyone\u2019s content in an improper way as far as I can see. If he was, I wouldn’t be an editor.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s not ridiculing any bloggers. Heck, he\u2019s not even inserting any commentary on anything. He\u2019s simply using technology to bring together a list of posts at good blogs, so that readers like me can cruise the blogosphere conveniently. I\u2019ve found out about a number of blogs via BNN, and I don\u2019t think I would have found them otherwise.<\/p>\n

My hope is that David can reach out to bloggers to:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Publish a policy about what BNN does and how they do it, so that everyone has a full and correct understanding. (I’ve seen bloggers improperly state how the site works. I don’t think they were being malicious in their wrong statements, but I would like everyone to have the right story.)<\/li>\n
  2. Start a dialogue with bloggers to help address their fears and make sure their content isn’t being misused in any way.<\/li>\n
  3. Implement changes that make the BNN channels better for bloggers.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    <\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Several months ago, I stumbled on Blog Net News (BNN) and liked what I saw. The site has different \u201cchannels\u201d that focus on geographic areas or certain topics. Each channel aggregates the RSS feeds of various bloggers. For those who […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1704","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing-blogging"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Z0e-ru","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1704","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1704"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1704\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1704"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1704"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1704"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}