Please remove ALL of my posts.

Hi AF,

Sounds like a question for DIY Electric Car, they have RSS feeds from many sites.
I personally don't know much about RSS feeds. Looks as though they have feeds from tons of blogs on a lot of sites.
Don't think it's a matter of being copied and republished ... just a matter of subscribing to an RSS feed.
I saw my stuff on there too, if ya find out what the deal is, let me know.
Personally, I could give a hoot if people read my blog, I knew it was information available to the public the moment I posted it in a blog on a forum that is accessible to the public. I don't think you can post anything anywhere on the internet and expect it to not be seen by many. Unless, of course it's a https:// secure website like a bank or sales transaction.
I just always have a rule of never putting anything "out there in cyberspace" that I want to remain private aside from the occasional secure sockets website transaction. Maybe one of our web gurus can explain it better and in more detail.
I think Wikipedia has a pretty good explanation of RSS feeds and public access.

MB-1-E

Hi ArcticFox, This is something to take up with the owner of that site. I want to explain what they're doing and why I don't see it as a problem.

We noticed that site a short time ago and I looked at it.. what they're doing is consuming RSS feeds and republishing on their site. V.net publishes RSS feeds (take a gander to the righthand navigation column, and notice the Syndicate label with a groovy RSS-Feed icon under it...) and they can be easily consumed in a variety of ways. Only one of which is what that site is doing.

For the record, on http://wwwats.net I have set up an RSS aggregation site covering electric vehicles and some related issues. On wwwatts.net I'm using the V.net RSS feed similarly to how they're doing it.

Another possible use is that you can use a desktop news aggregator program (I prefer http://www.blogbridge.com .. blogbridge) and subscribe to the feed published on the Recent page and be up-to-date with new postings on this site without even having to visit the site in your browser.

Since you do engage in website design yourself maybe you know all this already.

If you look at that DIY site they aren't republishing the entire posting, only the first bit. That's what tells me they're using the RSS feed.

So... This site, V.net, enabled that site to do something and you're clearly not happy. What do you think we can or should do about it? Let me lay out the considerations I have related to this:-

a) It's a really really really good idea for V.net to publish RSS feeds

b) Since RSS feeds are data (XML format) it's easy for a program to pick up that data and remungify it into something like a forum posting ... we can't do much to stop what they do with our data. This is web2.0 era and websites are publishing data all over the place for others to reincorporate into other services.

c) The issue of whether to apply a copyright to this site, and what copyright could possibly be applied, is confusing to say the least. Clearly the words each of you write are yours... but each page has a mix of writings from whoever commented on that page, so what's the total copyright of that page? You could add a copyright notice to your signature, however. At the moment no copyright notice has been posted on this site.

d) They're helping V.net by posting links to our site which the search engines will notice and bump up the prestige of our site. I'm rather pleased they chose us as a site to track...

:) ,
If you look around more you'll see we receive a sort of compliment, on how to create a Forum.