Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.
Re: Internet Alchemy
Author: Lindon Parker Posted: 6/14/1999; 10:40:44 PM Topic: Internet Alchemy Msg #: 7377 (In response to 7354) Prev/Next: 7376 / 7378
Paul Nakada said:"Now the question boils down to control."Sure does. BUT, this is the internet space(duh!) and in the end the user has control, they could use WebPluck themselves and be done with it, and none of us could stop it.
Further: "Ownership" of content is about copyright, and as someone has pointed out, there is a "fair usage" clause in the copyright law of almost all countries. Thus I may not quote a whole book but a quote of (say) a paragraph in some speech I'm making is fair usage.
This applies on-line too, otherwise I've just infringed on Paul's copyright above. "Syndication" is, I think, the provision of "edited"(selected) content, either "edited" by the content owner or some 3rd party.
If we try to stop this "editing" we end up with "just links" to content and this makes for bad-bad-bad navigation. As Jacob Neilson says better sites take care of micro-content(the bit of content used to tell you what is "under" the link), it seems to me that headlines are pretty good micro-content and should be seen as a navigational device, they point you into the content. A good clue, I think, is that often the whole headline is the link, not just part of it.
Thus a page full of your or my content headlines may be seen as navigation not content per-se. Which would, I think, square pretty well with what jeff-from-wired said about the "front-door" advertising not being too successful. So I'd suggest syndication of headlines would be good news for most content owneres, permissioned/requested or not.
Note the oft used "I think" in this post, which means I can be convinced otherwise...
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