With the advent of the RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds, copyright law got a lot trickier. Labeled "really simple stealing" by AOL's Jason Calacanis, there is still no clear-cut legal precedent about implied consent to repurpose syndicated content, but the legal system that protects search engines may also green-light spammy content aggregators.
Electronic Frontier Foundation told Murdok, "Frankly, until there is some case law on this or related issues, we simply can't be sure of the answers to these questions. "As with so many things on the Internet, copyright law has yet to catch up with the realities of RSS syndication."
But copyright holders have caught up with Google, whose News and Book Search offerings have gotten the company sued in several countries, including the U.S., France, and Belgium. U.S. courts so far have held up Google's right to index copyrighted content.
Google says its right to offer headlines, titles, and snippets of content is supported by a standing policy to allow content owners to opt out of indexing.
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