Yet Another Post on Feed Licensing

Back in April, I blogged about copyright and licensing standards for feeds.  People were happy with most of it, with one big exception:  Nobody can agree on what to do with feeds lacking an explicit license.  People clearly felt I was nuts to suggest that the implicit permissions involved in this situation could be captured in any flavor of Creative Commons license.  Obviously the owner holds copyright, and obviously fair use applies in the US, and unfortunately nobody can specify what that means in a way that software can understand.

So, here's my new summary, which is shorter but more complicated:

• Support and promote feed standards for embedded licenses.
• Allow fair use for unlicensed feed content.
  

You'll need to consult your legal department on what fair use is in each case, and figure out how to deal with international jurisdictions too.

All of which makes embedding licenses in feeds even more important.

Tags: Feed Copyright, Creative Commons, RSS, Atom, syndication