Social aggregators like Shyftr threaten the livelihood of bloggers
By Triston McIntyre
With bloggers quickly gaining authority with the media and the public, more people are surfing the internet for the words of unofficial authorities on just about any topic you could imagine. However, the increased publicity of bloggers is turning out to be a double-edged sword; readers are turning to social aggregators to get the skinny on the best blogs, which is having a directly adverse effect on the traffic revenue that many bloggers rely on to pay their bills.
Really, the nature of social aggregators raises a very significant question that should be addressed: as bloggers, are we more focused on simply contributing our ideas to the constantly churning think tank of the internet, which was how blogging originated, or must we put our collective foot down and say bloggers deserve the income-generating traffic that many of us rely on?
As it stands, most of the large social indexing sites like Digg, Fark, Slashdot, Techmeme, and others are very good about only including a snippet of each blogger’s writing, thus encouraging readers to jump to the source for the full article. In doing so, the social site receives payment for the initial traffic, but bloggers don’t lose out on those cherished hits we live and breathe by.
Shyftr, however, really is a direct threat to bloggers. Shyftr allows users to view all their favorite sites in entirety from their account pages; Shyftr is essentially a full-featured RSS reader where you can get the full scoop without spending time visiting sites one by one.
Now, if sharing ideas and contributing insights is the whole kit and kaboodle to blogging, then Shyftr would be a great thing; however, the truth of the matter is that what bloggers write is their property, and by displaying that content elsewhere, Shyftr is essentially stealing that content with no regard for the writers who invested the time and money necessary to make the article happen.
Bloggers get outraged any time they find a piece of their work directly stolen by some unwitting blogger who thought it was okay to go around jacking people’s content; threats are made, words are exchanged, and nine out of ten times, the law sides with the blogger whose work was stolen.
Why, then, shouldn’t bloggers have the same right to be equally upset that large aggregators are stealing their content with no regard to the writers who actually created the content?
If Shyftr is allowed to continue its rather underhanded business, then I would like to propose a change to the way content is used by social aggregators: if Shyftr wants to display the content from a particular site, Shyftr should be forced to contact those responsible for each individual website and reach a contractual agreement under which a percentage of the revenue generated by hits to Shyftr gets paid directly to the writers and publishers of each website Shyftr displays. That percentage redirected to the sites Shyftr displays should in no way relate to the amount of times a reader requests a particular site; rather, Shyftr should overcompensate websites and writers for the traffic those writers will lose due to their sites being displayed on Shyftr.
Of course, that isn’t particularly good for Shyftr, but why should it be? If each individual writer were to take Shyftr to court for content theft, those writers would be compensated not just for amount they lost by having their content indexed on Shyftr, but would receive more for the effect lost traffic can have on a blog. Bloggers know that traffic isn’t just about money; fluctuating traffic can completely redirect one’s business strategy, and can adversely affect ads and marketing as well.
Right now, Shyftr and other similar social aggregators that display whole content from blogs and websites are not being held accountable for the blatant content theft they are guilty of every day. If bloggers don’t want their content hijacked, then every self-respecting blogger needs to demand that Shyftr either change the nature of its aggregator, or start duly compensating each and every blog it steals from.
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April 12th, 2008
The answer is to change your blog to only partial feeds for RSS. That is YOUR responsibility and decision, not a site like Shyftr.
April 13th, 2008
Rowdygal: The notion that RSS feeds offer an implied license to scrape is a fallacious argument that has no basis in current legal theory or case law. The method of delivery does not change the protections the author receives in the work.
Just because something can be done, does not mean that one has the right to do it.
If a blogger says that they do not want their feed published, even if there actually is an implied license, that is their right and sites such as Shyftr to abide by it. It is not the blogger’s responsibility to cripple their feed (and likely lose readers) in order to prevent others from profiting from their work without their permission.
It is the responsibility of the company seeking to use the copyrighted works of another to do so both ethically and within the bounds of the law. I feel strongly that Shyftr is outside on both. They are the ones seeking to profit from other people’s work, not the blogger who, often without intention or any direct action, published an RSS feed.
April 17th, 2008
Just want to share with u :)))
As Drezner and Farrel put it, “…and though elite bloggers are ideologically diverse, they’re demographically similar. Middle-class white males are overrepresented in the upper echelons of the blogosphere.”