phil ringnalda

I mostly ignore the various Corante “weblog like content products”, since they can’t be bothered to ping weblogs.com or blo.gs or to provide an RSS feed, which means I don’t know when they’ve updated, which means that to me they don’t exist, but since Jenny has been talking about them the last couple of days, I wandered over to look at Copyfight*. I thought about scraping some feeds, since they seem to have pretty stable HTML, but having looked at their terms of use, and noted that

You acknowledge and agree that all content and materials available on this site are protected by copyrights, trademarks, service marks, patents, trade secrets, or other proprietary rights and laws. Except as expressly authorized by Corante, you agree not to sell, license, rent, modify, distribute, copy, reproduce, transmit, publicly display, publicly perform, publish, adapt, edit, or create derivative works from such materials or content. In addition, use of the content or materials for any purpose not expressly permitted in these Terms of Use is prohibited.

I figured that was right out the window. So I was a bit surprised that quite a few people had hopped on the idea of scraping Copyfight today. Then I went back and noticed that although the left column links to the terms of use (“You agree not to move your lips while reading this site if a lipreader is or could be within 500 feet”), the right column links to a “By” Creative Commons license. That means that you may create commercial derivative works, as long as you give attribution to the original author. Left column? You may not use the content in any way not expressly allowed in the Terms of Use. Note that the Terms of Use do not expressly allow you to read the content. You may not read it in an aggregator, you may not read it in a browser, you may not read it on the train…. Right column? You may copy the entire site, use it as a chapter in book, sell the book, and all you have to give the author is a “by Donna Wentworth” at the start of the chapter. In-ter-esting. Really brings the whole Copyfight thing home, to have your left and right columns duelling over the center column’s license.

* Well, the truth is that I’ve been reading Jonathan Peterson for a long time, and so I knew he had a Corante “weblog like content product”, and if he reminds me in his real blog when he updates his ‘weblog like content product” I’ll read it, but I’m not about to admit it.

Update: whatever else you can say about Corante, you can’t say they aren’t quick: I posted this entry at 11:15 p.m., and at 11:34 p.m. I got a referral from a credit link in their newly-altered Terms of Use. I’m impressed. If only all my petulant, off the top of my head rants worked so well, and so quickly!