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jbenton I think Dickens is an entirely different case. Works enter the public domain *explicitly* to enable new and additional commercial works. Luminary can read all the Shakespeare they want and I wouldn't mind that. I think on the other hand...
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jbenton ...RSS Feeds have no capability to designate license terms, but even if they did, the intent and assumption of the open web can fairly be assumed to be Share Alike. One of the reasons CC came about is because traditional copyright didn't function well within the open web.
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jbenton In terms of if a publisher should be able to embed tweets and sell subscriptions, I'd say there are a couple of factors that are worth considering: 1. No one is going to publishers with the intent to use them primarily for the consumption of Twitter...
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jbenton 2. Twitter, and its users, retain explicit control over the embed even out of the site context. Users could delete or go private and responsible journalists would parse that behavior. Twitter could block a single site or embedder that it feels is mistreating users...
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jbenton 3. All works that a standard publisher produces are available as objects on the open web. They have publically accessible URLs that can be reached with a standard web browser and even when the content of those URLs is blocked, they share metadata to the rest of the web.
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jbenton And I think this third, when considering upholding principles of the open web, is of prime concern. Even subscriber only works at a place like The Daily Beast have web addresses and metadata. They are reachable artifacts, they interact back with the open web.
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jbenton However, an app that produces internal only content does not have any interaction on that content with the open web. If a Luminary-only podcast does something important we can't link to it in a publically accessible way, we can't parse its data, we don't even know its full title
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jbenton An app's subscriber-only content is inherently against the open web. It is not just outside of it, it is in opposition to it. In that situation it is taking advantage of the open web (RSS Feeds) for the purpose of essentially marketing the destruction of the open web.
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jbenton What compounds the issue even further is the question of point 1. Is the primary use of this subscription app free content? It seems to me the answer is yes. If that's the case then the open web is being taken advantage of in a real way that is damaging to its long term existence
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jbenton See if the app was selling itself only and no content, this wouldn't be a problem. And if the app was only selling its own content, that also wouldn't be a problem (though it is to some degree also troubling)...
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jbenton The issue is operating on open web properties to provide value to a closed web system. Not only does this betray the expectations of the open web, it creates a dangerous vertical integration inside a closed garden that uses the open web to create an argument against the open web
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jbenton The primary principles of the open web include reciprocity. I agree, there are a lot of fine details to understanding what that means and few seem to do a good job explaining what it is they don't like, but I think the details are worth parsing.
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jbenton As a final note: I'd argue that this situation is a strong indicator we need to embed licensing agreements into content more strongly and expand the scope of what exactly CC means with some lawyers on board.