What to do about RSSing.com?
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RSSing.com is picking up and publishing all of my RSS feed. I’ve limited my feed to excerpts only, so they usually don’t get the complete post. However, with photography posts they do get and publish the photos, full sized. This means that (a) they are taking my entire post and (b) they are violating the copyright of the photographer who gave me (not RSSing) written permission to publish the photo.
Will following their instructions to publish a post with a specific code number in it actually stop them from publishing my feed? I hate to have such a stupid post appearing on my blog and giving them the publicity.
How does one deal with sites like this? If I stop my RSS feed, won’t that cut off all my subscribers, notifications to them, Twitter and Facebook?
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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If I stop my RSS feed, won’t that cut off all my subscribers, notifications to them, Twitter and Facebook?
Yes.
I’m wondering what will happen if you disable these:
Settings > Reading
Enhanced Feeds
Add to each article in your feed: Categories
Tags
Comment count
SharingChanges may not appear until you create a new post or your news reader refreshes
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How does one deal with sites like this?
Once years ago we had another site doing this for all wordpress.com blogs. It meant we all had to request our sites be removed. It was an ugly scene.
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I’m preparing the post with the code number, as they requested, but I’ve little hope the solution will be that simple.
I think I’ve already disabled everything you listed. Just like Reblogs, they grab the first few sentences and the photos. Some of those photos I had written permission to reprint, but RSSing does not.
Also like Reblogs, they link back to my blog, but it’s not an occasional post, it’s every post. The whole website is nothing but reprints of everyone’s RSS feeds.
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If you have your feed set to summery and they have your entire Post in their feed then they are doing a two step operation – grab your summery feed then read the entire Post and put it in their feed, or something like that. since a summery feed from here only has limited content – I have everything set to summery, in part to save bandwidth in email
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No, they just publish the summary. I’ve had it set that way for a number of years to foil scrapers. Apparently, though, the feeds include all the images in a post.
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@windwhistle
How did you make out re: contacting them and requesting removal of your site? -
It appears they removed the one “channel” or category that the code referred to — an automated computer function, I’m sure. But it seems all the other channels (each of them being one of my 192 categories) are still there. No response to my note requesting they remove all Pied Type channels, and I don’t expect any. That would require a human response instead of an automated computer action.
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That’s an understatement. But it’s not illegal to republish an RSS, so I’ve little recourse.
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Yes, it can indeed be illegal if it violates your copyright. This misunderstanding is because of the word “Syndication.”
I suggest you read this http://drinkscoaster.com/2013/01/02/whine-journalism-and-how-to-bring-the-splashback
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No updates. No response to my request to take down ALL my stuff. My research indicates that unless they change what they pull from the RSS feed, or insert advertising within it, (in other words, not make a derivative work) it’s legal to repost a feed. I’m publishing the feed for the public to pick up and they’re only posting what’s in the feed. I could stop the feed, but I don’t know how many of my readers count on it.
What distresses me is the amount of material that WP puts in the feed, especially when they don’t include just one image, they include all the images (just like with Reblogs), stripping all the captions and other attribution included with the image. Of course, it’s far worse than reblogs because it looks like they take every post and have been for a long time.
My biggest concern is that some of the photos they’re grabbing are copyrighted by the photographers and I got permission to reprint them — on MY blog, my non-commercial blog. I guess I could publish one more notice and try to get just the photography category taken down.
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unless they change what they pull from the RSS feed, or insert advertising within it, (in other words, not make a derivative work) it’s legal to repost a feed.
That is incorrect. Profoundly incorrect.
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RSS feeds here can’t be turned off here –
What surprises me is that WordPress.com – for all their lip service about bloggers intellectual property rights would put all the pictures in the feed even when the feed is set to summery
I will defer to RC for the legal stuff – but seems to me a legal terms of use could be 65 words, one image and no more than 5 Posts
the funny thing about the pictures in the feed – the first picture is a blank small little empty square that breaks several feed readers – one site that picks up my feed (by permission by the way) – when my Post is shown in their Guest Dock (the raw feeds with one picture and a few words, the first picture is a big blank nothing) – a feed set up so they can see what the blogs that they feature on their site are publishing
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Fair use does not generally extend to material copyrighted by third parties. If the photographers have asserted their copyrights on you, then RSSing.com is equally bound by that and can even be sued by each photographer individually. The only court victory for sharing images included sharing thumbnails no wider than 120 pixels.
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I agree with auxclass that the feeds from WP should include only one image, and only a thumbnail at that. In fact, I’d prefer no images at all, only headlines and summaries. Doesn’t seem right that I allow only summaries, but the current set-up sends all the images.
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I found an address for RSSing.com via a Whois search. After several false starts and a forward, I finally got a note this morning saying they had removed all my content through the backend, but “There may be frontend cache issues that we cannot check automatically that may result in your content still being shown.”
I get a bit lost in the frontend, backend, cache discussion, but with spot checking I’ve been unable to find any of my stuff the way I did before. So it appears the issue may have been solved.
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