(By You Yunting) A user on Zhihu.com asked some question about RSS
- Is it kinda fair use of RSS?
- Is it kinda fair use to transfer the excerpt context RSS to the full text RSS?
- Is it kinda fair use of Flipboard and similar applications’ excerpt context which do not use RSS?
In terms of the first question: ,Is it kinda fair use of RSS?
If a website supports full content RSS output, then it is actually the using on the license of the copyright holder instead of the fair use. While, where a website only supports excerpt context RSS and if a third party scraps the content into a full context RSS, it is infringing as it has used the content without any license.
Let’s first check the definition of RSS. We could find a clear definition in Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rss.): If a website placed the RSS file on its page, user could use a RSS feed to read the latest contents if he cannot open the content page. Based on the said character of RSS, in author’s opinion, RSS actually is a form of authorization from the site owners. If the website provides RSS file, it licenses users to read the content without visiting its website. According to the Copyright Law, Fair use means that under the specific circumstance we can use the content without the copyright’s holder’s permit and with payment of remuneration. The transliteration of a published work into Braiile and into minority nationality languages and free performance of a published work belong to fair use.
In conclusion, RSS outpiut is upon the licensing of the copyright holder, and yet the fair use does not demand the licensing from the copyright holder. So the fair use of RSS could not be regarded as the fair use in Copyright Law.
On the second question, is it kinda fair use to transfer the excerpt context RSS to the full text RSS? After the emergency of RSS technology, many website operators find it influences the visits volume if they support RSS. Therefore, they just provide sectional RSS output or summarized RSS output, such as the first paragraph and first 500 words on RSS, so that users would like to click the link to read the full content on its website. But this said RSS output can be regarded as giving the access to read part of the content without visiting its web. If a third party scarp the full content and provides RSS output for users, it constitutes the tort of Copyright Law and unfair competition, regarding using the content beyond the website’s permit.
About the third question, is it kinda fair use of Flipboard and similar applications’ excerpt context which do not use RSS? In author’s opinion, according to the article 6 of the Regulation on the Protection of the Right to Network Dissemination of Information: “When an appropriate quotation from a published work is provided to the public for the purposes of introducing or commenting on any work or for elaborating on any issue, Anyone who provides others’ works through the information network shall not have to obtain permission from, or pay remuneration to, the copyright holder.” Furthermore, this article also protects the acts of showing the searchable excerpt of whole content indexed in a search engine.
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