Incoherent Babble

I was catching up on some older RSS entries and read Greg Reinacker’s entry about ads briefly appearing in Newsgator Online. Following his link, I found Jason Calacanis’ rant about stealing Weblogs, Inc. content by placing ads next to full-text feeds.

Can someone please tell me when it became illegal to place advertisements in a product or service that you’ve spent time and money creating? Yes, I agree you have a right to your content, Jason, but I think you’ve let the muscle of a big company like AOL go to your head here. Even if Newsgator continued to place advertisements in their online RSS reader, how does that in any way violate your copyright when a user just happens to load up a feed from a Weblogs, Inc. blog?

Let’s look at this from another side, shall we?

Jason is contending that if advertisements are displayed on the same page as the full content of one of his company’s blog posts, that the owner of that site is attempting to unlawfully profit from the hard work and dedication of his authors.

Well Jason, what if I wrote a desktop RSS reader and released a free ad-supported version to the internet public? Are you trying to say that because a user loaded up your feed in a software product I created, that I’m somehow illegally profiting from the redistribution of your content? That’s like claiming that it’s illegal for a newspaper to sell advertising space next to a Reuters or AP story, isn’t it?

What happened to the free exchange of information that is the goal of your glorious blogging empire, Jason? When did it become illegal for a company to place advertisements in a tool they are providing for free to the internet populace, simply because an end user decided to load up the content of one of your blogs’ full-text feeds in their tool?

How can you possibly report news from other sites, while placing advertisements next to the stories citing this news, and manage to sleep at night?

Now to be clear, I fully respect Jason’s desire to protect his content. I know that plagiarism on the internet is a growing problem, but how does this even remotely fall into the same category? Weblogs, Inc. is providing a service (through their production of content and referral of news) for free, while supported by advertisements. Why is it suddenly unjust for Newsgator, Yahoo!, Google, or anyone else providing another service (through their aggregation of news they claim no copyright of) to also support it for free with advertisements?

They’re not trying to pass your content off as their own, Jason, they’re just trying to make it easier for you to reach a larger audience. Quit being a self-righteous jerk, will ya? And honestly, lay off the big-company bullying. It doesn’t suit you, or the blogosphere. Isn’t that why we all got into this “blogging” thing anyway, to break the big-company hold on information?

I think it’s time that somebody took a step back from their AOL throne and took a look at what he’s become… I know I sure don’t like it, and I don’t think the person who founded Weblogs, Inc. would either…

UPDATE: I read a piece of Jason’s entry that I missed earlier… You know, the part where he says he doesn’t care if your RSS reader is making money or not, you can’t put advertisements next to his content. That just twists the knife a little more. You’ve put in the same effort he has into creating something new. Yours is an RSS reader to benefit users (for free). His is a series of blogs generating content to benefit users (for free). Somehow he’s allowed to extort money for his effort, but no one else is?

Sorry, but you’ve totally and absolutely ruined any last shred of respect I had for you… I’d like to think it’s AOL life that’s caused stuff like this to happen, Jason, but I’m beginning to wonder if this is the true Jason Calacanis that’s been lurking beneath the surface all along: the two-faced money-grubbing hypocrite Jason.

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