When Is a Splog a Splog?

Mark Cuban brings up a few interesting points in response to my post yesterday on blog content “theft.” He's asking whether a Creative Commons license conveys to an individual the right to use an automated program to repackage and re-distirbute content with attribution. He goes a step further by defining a splog as any hosted website that only uses redirected or copied content and doesn't add any unique value. Finally, Mark and others also noted in comments that my old Creative Commons license was in invitation to be splogged. I have since updated it. (Thanks to everyone who offered advice.)

Mark's definition of a splog is very broad. It raises bigger questions. For example where do automated aggregation sites like CNET Blog 100 Stream and Phillipp Lenssen's Feeds fall? I'm certainly not crying that they're linking to me. Additionally, as Alek notes on Mark's blog and Mike Masnick also indicates, you or I can't determine if a blogger's content is actually licensed for use by the reblogger or simply a bot. For example, months ago I agreed to let WebProNews republish my content. How would you know that?

On a related note, there was a total vacuum of information on Podcast Rebroadcast, one of the re-bloggers. He/she has since informed me that blogs are often blocked by schools and the site was designed to fill the void a resource for students and teachers. But again, how was I to know what the intent was? I was never contacted.

Content “theft” or whatever you want a call it has been an issue long before the Internet became a mass medium. It mushroomed over the past 10 years and now that everyone is a publisher, it will only get worse. As Nicolai says, it's a natural byproduct of RSS. Maybe Nick is right, the best solution is to ignore it. I surely can. Google, Technorati, IceRocket et al, however, can't be as cavalier.

Technorati Tags: Creative Commons, IceRocket, Mark Cuban, Spam, Splog, Splogs