They call these things a weblog or a blog … I guess it can’t just simply be a site? I don’t think that this is necessarily anything new, I just think that the software involved to make these things easier for the laymen to run is why it has become something popular … I mean, I know it’s nothing much to create a database, devise a way to show its content on the web and provide a form to enter new content into it … They just came up with some nifty tools to do such a thing …
The January 31, 2005 issue of Information Week has as their cover story “Who owns Weblog content?” … The article is sorta based on the employees of a company who part of their job is to provide a weblog … One such person who works for Google posted some stuff that he shouldn’t have posted … He discussed his compensation package as well as his signing bonus on his weblog … Two days later it was gone …
So yeah, if you work for a company and it’s your job to produce weblog content, I would assume it’s the property of the companies. When I worked for a company, any resulting code that came from my fingers was the property of the company. I would assume using their computers and their systems that weblog content would fall under the same category …
For someone like me who publishes this crap for anyone to read, the content is mine, and I have the nifty Creative Commons License to protect my intellectual prowess … If there’s something here that someone actually finds of value, the method described in the license is to give me credit, and if you’re gonna get money as a result, well, we gotta talk …
I just think it’s interesting to blow out of proportion the simplest of things that we use on the Internet … One valid point however is the feeds … I don’t believe in the feed you get the license, so if you send all of your text (as do I) I don’t think the license is passed … but in order to get the feed in the first place, I assume you’d have to have visited the site and had access to the license … Therefor I think you’re still liable … Cause if there’s something you want to use from someone’s work, you would probably research it fully before assuming it’s “up for grabs” …
That’s just my opinion …