In search of an RSS social contract
Imagine a world where people leave all their possessions outside their door and expect strangers to use these things. It would require a gifted science-fiction writer to construct a viable social contract around such a culture. RSS is creating just such a world in the blogosphere, and there are signs it isn't all going well. Steve Rubel's complaint that splogs are stealing his content, and the associated comments, are a graphic example of the fuzzy boundaries that now exist in the area of RSS republishing. What is the proper definition of a splogger? Is Mark Cuban right in claiming that "Aggregation is not value add." What about Tech.Memeorandum or Technorati? Where is the boundary between a search engine for RSS items and an aggegator? If a splogger hires an A-list blogger to select the RSS items that are posted is this still splogging? What if a splogger uses Mechanical Turkers to select the posts for publication? What if the public is used to select posts? Trying to stuff all those billions of little RSS feed items back into their original bottles is going to be impossible.
