RSS is not free content for publishers
What does RSS stand-for? A lot of frustrated publishers joke that it means “Really Simple Stealing.” It actually refers to either “Really Simple Syndication” or “Rich Site Summary.” RSS is basically a family of standardized XML formats that is most commonly used for news sites and blogs (such as the one you are reading now).
The only problem with RSS is that it is almost too easy to syndicate. I have had a lot of debates with people who see RSS as an easy source of infinite content they can monetize. This doesn’t make a lot of sense to me - RSS is a method of content delivery, it has nothing to do with the content itself. Taking somebody else’s content and running your own ads on it is not a whole lot different from checking a book out of the library, copying it word for word and selling it as your own. While taking RSS feeds and running ads on it may not seem like a very lucrative opportunity, keep in mind that Weblogs, Inc. claims it will net $1 million this year on from Adsense alone.
That being said, there are definitely services that entrepreneurs can provide utilizing RSS feeds that are considered fair use. I don’t mind if somebody takes the title of my blog posts or an excerpt from the post and links to my site for the full article. If somebody took my entire post, however, and ran an adsense campaign on the page, I would be upset. In fact, this has happened to me - I emailed the publisher and asked them not to steal my content. When they were unwilling to stop, I emailed Google and asked that they be blacklisted. I’m not sure what Google did but this publisher is no longer showing up on my terms.
Jason Calacanis, founder of Weblogs, Inc. and blog pioneer, writes about a publisher monetizing his content. He has a great explanation of fair use.
When you take entire posts from publishers and make money on the content, you are taking money out of the author’s pocket and diluting their brand. When you provide a navigation service or aggregate blog postings with a common theme and link to the original content, you are providing a service to the publisher and the reader. It’s not wrong to monetize the traffic you generate when you are adding some kind of value or service. It is important to keep in mind, however, that RSS is a delivery method and copyright laws still apply to the content that is being distributed.
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