jkash@skadden.com (Jonathan Kash) — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 10:30:47 -0800

The big problem with "other people's content" is a change in terms & conditions. Wired mag has a good article on scraping: http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/magazine/16-01/ff_scraping

davidtcarson@gmail.com (Dave C.) — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 14:17:38 -0800

I'm in the process of creating one of these "aggregated feeds" on a niche area of law. I didn't go with Pipes because I wanted more control over the feed. But it is a great concept. And I agree, Kevin, that it's a great way to show off expertise. It's also a great way to stay current on your niche and build a personal content/knowledge management system.

One issue related to Jonathan's comment. In my niche, there is a major player/authority that delivers updates about 10 times per day. But they refuse to serve their content via RSS because they think it will hurt their daily page views. I think they've got it backwards.

But I've stopped trying to convince them. Instead, I'm considering scraping their site and creating my own RSS feed of their content. I know there are a lot of attorneys in my niche that would find this RSS feed extremely useful. My only concern is the "other people's content" issue. But so long as the feed only has titles and excerpts with links to the original content, I should be safe. Any thoughts?

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