Can an aggregator company ever make money?
I was reading Jason’s post this morning over at thejasoncalacanisweblog - which got me wondering whether an aggregator company can ever make money?
To a certain degree, I agree with Jason that it is not appropriate for people to take others’ content and make money on it without the permission of the original content owner. That argument seems to make sense when I am thinking of people that steal your content to put on some web site alongside ads. Where it breaks down for me is in the scenario of a company selling an aggregator to its end users (and there are some of them out there). In effect, and according to Jason’s logic, that company is also making money from someone else’s content.
Ah, maybe there is some lawyer out there who can enlighten us.
[Technorati Tags: rss aggregator IP]
You would have to shut down a lot of tech companies if this principal of taking other’s content and making money on it without permission was taken to an extreme… All the search engines take at least a few sentences (with Google Cache, the whole page) and yet no one gives them permission. Maybe the answer is that RSS aggregators may only take the excerpt feed if they intend to monetize with advertising…
Comment by Ted Shelton — September 16, 2005 @ 10:45 am