Originally Posted by edgeprod

It's very simple. Create a narrowly defined usage statement for the RSS feeds. For example:

Our RSS Feed, located at (location) may be used in the following ways:

1) By users wishing to add our RSS feed to their browsers, thereby pulling daily updates.

2) By users wishing to add our feed to "favorites" pages on Google, Yahoo, or other portal networks.

Our RSS Feed and page content may not be used for:

1) Syndication to other sites outside of our network, for any reason. Failure to comply will result in blah, blah, blah (insert threats that can't be followed up on, and are too expensive to pursue anywany, but get people scared).


Basically, this tells people wishing to pull the feed what they CAN use it for, and what they CAN'T use it for. Stick a link to it close to your feed buttons, and at the bottom of your page. You might also consider tagging it into the RSS feed somehow, although I don't have the technical details on that.

It won't STOP people from "stealing," but it WILL give you more backup against the "oh, I didn't know I couldn't use it!" thing. People pulling your content are mostly honest webmasters (I pull a lot, myself), but the scumbags who do bad things with it, and don't send you linkbacks, traffic, etc. in exchange should lose their hosting.

Good luck with it, man!