Marek Pawłowski

Marek,

> Could you tell me why are you blocking your feed from being accessible by
> [name of site] feed?

Because it was republished as content on another site without permission. I
do not want it to be used as content for another site. See relevant
copyright laws for more information.

> If you really don't want to be published there then just ask person
> responsible for [name of site] to remove you from their list.

I was not asked for permission to republish when it is my own copyright -
why should I have to ask for permission for it to be removed? (That is a
rhetorical question, I do not want an answer :) ). I already have a message
on my site's information page asking people not to reuse substantial parts
of my content without permission, which was ignored.

> Even if "This is not an Opera related feed", it contains many useful
> informations, often related to Opera Browser.

No. There were two of my feeds being republished without permission. That
feed never has Opera-centric articles. It only has generic Web development
articles which do not target Opera specifically any more than any other
browser. The other feed is Opera related, and was replaced with a message
saying not to republish content.

> Please consider to open your feed back for [name of site] access as I cannot
> see why it could hurt you.

It will never be opened for use by [name of site], or any similar
non-requested-subscription site. Subscription should be by request of the
individual user only, using their own aggregator, which they can do using
the links on my site.

If you are interested in the content of the feeds, you can subscribe
directly to them:
http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/howtocreate.xml
http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/operaStuff/operaStuff.xml


Mark 'Tarquin' Wilton-Jones - author of http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/

Marek,

> I would point out that AFAIK this wasn't literally "stealing" as
> there were proper author information and link to your site.

It is still violating copyright. Attribution does not change that.

[Ed. You may wish to note that this sort of thing could be a legal issue.
However, I am not treating this as a legal issue, and I would not want to
treat it as a legal issue. I just want it to stop, which it has.]

> Well, after considering it a bit I see that [name of site] does not have
> the same copyright policy as you do so it could lead to leaking your
> content further without your notice. Which I assume was your main
> concern against it.

No. I object very strongly to a site republishing my content when I ask them
not to, no matter what that content is, the feed or anything else. I do not
have to explain my reasoning for this, and I do not want to get into any
discussions about it.

> I think simple HTTP header "Gone" or "Permission
> denied" would be better

I am not the first author to have their content republished without
permission by that site, and other sites. Others have objected, and have
used those headers, but it can take a long time for the operator of the site
to take notice and to stop trying to obtain the content for republishing. (I
have already stated my opinion of the use of email for this, and again, I do
not wish to discuss this any further.)

My response was very much appropriate, and effective. Replacing the feed
content forced the site operator to very quickly resolve the violation. The
matter has been settled. There is no need for further discussion.

> I do, but being lazy I prefer to subscribe to few [name of site]-like feeds
> than hundreds of individual feeds ;)

If you choose to subscribe to a feed from a site that republishes other
people's content without permission, then I am afraid you will have to
accept the consequences of what happens when the authors of the content take
offence to their content being used that way. If you are unable to accept
that, then you you should ask the site operator if they have obtained
permission for all of the content they are republishing.

Considering that I was not asked, I do not expect that any of the 80 or so
other authors have been asked either. If they have not, then you should not
be subscribing to that feed, unless you are willing to accept their
reactions when they discover it and object to it.