Friday, September 15, 2006

Appropriate use of RSS Feeds

Most Realtors know that members of MLS Systems happily subscribe to MLS area listing data and then create websites that display their own information next those listings, only crediting that actual listing agent down at the bottom of the page in fine print. This typically makes the listing appear as if its thiers to those outside the Industry that don't know to look to the fine print to find out who has it listed.

Now along comes RSS, allowing for people to build such pages with similar designs using RSS. But be carefull whose feeds your using. They may not wish to have their content displayed elsewhere on the web, and they may be giving you the entire detail of the articles and not crediting themselves well in their title. This could technically create copyright problems, despite the fact that they published an RSS feed, and I think many folks assume that if a feed is offered, its an open invitation for use. I recently ran into such an issue, even though the content did not involve listings, and didn't serve the same market as my folks business.

Also I wanted to run a little survey, so feel free to take the following


When you see a link to an rss feed on the Internet, in order to use it on your own site you should:
Call the source of the feed to gain permission
Credit the source with a hardcoded message on your site when the feed displays
Nothing - since they control the content, they can credit themselves in the title
Both 1 and 2

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