If you aren't writing for page views, and aren't a champion of headline construction, it only makes sense to provide full feeds. You want people to read your article and not guess whether they should. I guessed correctly about this article, but why tempt me to ignore you?

I am a champion of headline construction. That's what I meant about having good titles -- good, descriptive headlines. By "champion," I mean that's what I think people should do. Whether you or others find me to be a champion headline writer myself is another matter. But in this post, I hope you didn't have to "guess correctly" about it. The title and description combination should have given you a pretty good idea of what it was about:

Headline:
Full Feeds Petition? How About A Copyright Infringement Petition?

Description:
Robert Scoble points over to fullfeeds.com, a petition web site "against intentionally disabled rss feeds." Fine, I'm in a ranty mood. I'll give my argument in favor of summary feeds, along with the irony that the petition site itself doesn't offer a full feed -- or any feed at all.

There is a worry that the headline alone might not be descriptive enough. I had considered saying something like "In Defense Of Summary Feeds" or "Reasons Summary Feeds Make Sense" or for the Digg crowd, "25 Reasons Full Feeds Suck." But then I'd have to come up with 24 more reasons :)

Overall, it's always a balancing act. It's great if a headline can do everything, but sometimes it can't. Descriptions help, and the full text of a story helps further.

I'm even more baffled by this than you, Danny.

Perhaps this is because we watch the thievish activity more closely, being involved in SEM.

*Even with snippets*, automated solutions are being sold to index spammers who take your good name and topical content and mishmash it around and publish it en masse to aged domains in order to make a few dollars. Giving them a full feed to work with just makes it easier.

I've noticed since the Cluetrain days, the sort of strident "demand" that you must be generous in a certain way or risk violating the rules of the x-o-sphere. Who among us who create a lot of free resources are *not* generous? And yet if we diverge on some small point we need to be lectured by Mark Cuban or whatnot? These rules as always seem to be made by establishment figures who still see themselves as Mavericks (hence the title of Cuban's blog I suppose).

One of my idols, Neil Young, wrote "This Note's for You," in which he critiqued corporate sponsorships of tours... "Not singin' for Pepsi, not singin' for Coke." Unfortunately Neil couldn't stop his recent SNL appearance being "sponsored by Budweiser."

Well aware of all the contradictions inherent in his life and in the "content biz," Young earlier wrote some beautifully sarcastic lyrics:

There's a mansion on the hill
Psychedelic music fills the air
Peace and love live there still
There's a mansion on the hill

So I guess generosity, like sincerity, is the key.
If you can fake that, you've got it made. Corporations desperately need advice on how to appear generous and there are plenty of people willing to advise them on this.

Meanwhile though I have no problem with anyone making adult decisions about how to turn a profit, not turn a profit, or to monetize their content. It's up to them.

I'm supposed to not want pageviews now? It takes what... a *click* before someone decides to read my posts? I'm going to lead a "lonely life" because of that? Rubbish.

Since you quoted me, Danny (as saying "People who disable their full feeds are losing potential readers"), I'm going to provide my two cents: You are right. There are issues with copyright infringement. But while truncating your feeds may help, it's not necessarily the answer. And most who follow your posts usually (if not always) know that you were the one who made the original comment.

We do ultimately agree. When you later say, "For me, that's the biggest reason why someone might do a full text feed. Do it, and you guarantee more people will read your words," that's exactly my point.

I don't consider anyone evil or stingy for not giving me the ability to read the feeds in its entirety. However, when you're a reader wading through almost 80 feeds, it becomes burdensome to click on each thread to get the full content of what's available. For some blogs like yours, I don't want to miss something important. And that is exactly why I signed that petition. The content can be grabbed from the feed or from the blog itself; disabling full feeds doesn't address the underlying concern.

I'm still puzzled over what the problem is with splogs. Maybe it's because I'm not an A-list blogger, but getting wider distribution--even if someone is profiteering on my content--is what I want.

With respect to SEO, I have to have faith that search companies are working hard on the splog problem, and that my original content will still rise up in the SERPs above the splogs that copy it. Otherwise, splogs will kill search engines utility. I suspect it's only a matter of time before this problem will be solved by really smart people working very hard on it.

Are A-list bloggers making *that* much money on their content that splogs are making a material difference in their revenues? Or, is this an ideological problem: A-list bloggers see their content as so precious that for someone else to try and profit off it is so intolerably evil? To the latter, I say: Get over yourself.

Like I said, if distribution is what you're after, full text is an excellent way to go.

I don't think you have to be an A-list blogger to be annoyed when someone helps themselves to your content without permission. For one thing, it's illegal to do so, in many countries. It's also impolite. Some people simply don't know better. Some know exactly what they are doing and don't care. Whether you're profiting off content or not -- if you created it, it's yours until years down the line, copyright expires.

Danny, so if I understand you correctly, you're agreeing that splogs won't "destroy the blogosphere." What they are doing is "annoying" and "illegal" but the reality is this is just a bunch of scare-tactic hype by the A-list. Nobody should really care about this as seriously as they are.

Am I saying that intentional copyright infringement by sploggers isn't serious? Of course not. But, the reality is that their impact is negligible. People should be worrying more about actually producing content that's worth a splogger's time to reproduce. Most splogs just reprint worthless crap, but then, the Internet is mostly filled with worthless crap, and I'm referring to the original content, not the splogs.

I routinely get people emailing me about stolen copy. It's exactly the same thing that Robert was complaining about. It takes up time to review and decide if you have to act at all. So that's already taking up some time.

Unlike with trademarks, there's less of an issue that you'll somehow lose your copyright if you fail to enforce it, of course. And I agree with you, much infringement is done on sites that pretty much will never get seen. It's annoying, irritating but not something many people need to lose sleep over.

Then again, if I do produce original content worth viewing, I want people to view it on my own site -- which as a writer, is what pays my bills. Someone else taking my content, inserting their own ads? Not so cool.

Overall, I definitely see your point, but I still feel more protected sticking with summaries in places where I'm writing for a business reason. Perhaps as people become more educated, and issues about reuse and mashups become more fleshed out, I'll have more confidence jumping into full text.

What's wrong with these people thinking they should dictate how people create their feeds and run their blogs?

It goes much deeper than just a few wackos with a petition demanding full feeds as others use technology to get their way, no matter how you set up your feed.

Some people aren't aware that there are RSS readers and bots out there that read your RSS feeds and attempt to automatically grab the full page article.

Here's a thought to bridge the gap, offer an annual subscription fee for full RSS feeds otherwise you get headlines and snippets.

If you're stealing or otherwise using someone else's ideas without attribution or permission, it's bound to ruffle the person's feathers. Is this little side rant about "splogs" "vs." the so-called A-Listers really about the terrible "A-List Blogger" (or D-List academic for that matter) being too "precious" and "not over themselves"? Or about making up convenient rhetoric to justify laziness and pilfering?

Let's say you plagiarize a bunch of ideas from Thorsten Veblen for a paper you couldn't quite finish in your own words, or credibly attribute to other sources you'd read, because you didn't read them - for your sociology class. When caught red-handed you claim that "the old dead guy should be thankful for the distribution!"

What if you bust into your neighbor's home, get a video of her taking a shower, and post it online and show ads against it? "She should be thankful for the exposure! Is she so precious that ..." ... yes, she definitely is. And while my blog is not a naked, wet female, that's probably how I feel about it.

But seriously, I don't suppose that it's because someone feels their content is "precious." But they do feel it's their original content. And they'd like to choose the terms of its full distribution. Snippets are legal analagous to the way in which scholars are supposed to cite others' words fairly and properly but can certainly quote or paraphrase them if they do so.

I suppose these conventions grow up as with any social or moral convention that becomes law. We would like to think that what's ours is ours, within reason, and that there is some incentive to produce anything, whether that be intellectual property or otherwise... without having it ripped off or devalued. The scraper culture out there is certainly building a lot of businesses, some of which I don't dislike. But I believe it's sad when it pervades all the discourse. It feels like we live in a world without hubcaps because too many people feel that I shouldn't really lay claim to mine, so they can have them.