Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.
Clipping Services
Author: Mark Nottingham Posted: 9/2/1999; 9:12:18 PM Topic: Automated deep linking Msg #: 10489 (In response to 10485) Prev/Next: 10488 / 10490
This reminds me of another analogy;As a user of information, I want as many rights as possible to access it, within reason.
However, as a producer of information, I understand the reluctance of 'letting go' that a lot of content owners show. I used to be in the newspaper business (a photojournalist). I (and the paper I worked for) would not have appreciated someone reproducing a photograph in another publication. It's just not done.
But wait -- there's more. A very common (and well established) phenomenon is the 'Clipping Service' - a company that will, for a fee, look through all the newspapers every day and send you, by fax or in the post, any articles about the subject you're interested in. It could be your company, or a general subject. It could be an entire front page's content, if it's relevent.
The Clipping Services don't represent themselves as the creators of that content; that would be foolhardy, both legally and in a business sense; they're providing a service to (here it comes) aggregate content.
This is, of course, just an analogy, but I found it thought-provoking. Some will say that the Clipping Service is more like a search engine, but I don't think so; it may not be a perfect match with present aggregation technology, but I think it's in the direction it's going.
To see a real-world (vs. cyber) Clipping Service, have a look at http://www.mediamonitors.com.au/
Searches on Google and Yahoo also turn up some interesting stuff. http://www.google.com/search?q=clipping+service http://search.yahoo.com/bin/search?p=clipping
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