Things do get a bit fuzzy, ethically, if you publish an RSS feed. If you do that, I think you relinquish some control over how and where that feed is used, albeit with a reasonable expectation of being linked back and properly credited for your work. Ideally, the aggregating sites would just show a headline or snippet, and link to the original blog for the full post.

So I don’t like the way that avdomains did it; there was even a line at the end of each post that appeared to suggest that you were a contributing author to his website (it’s down right now, so I can’t confirm what it was exactly). That was a step too far. It should have been made much more clear that it was an aggregation of stories from the blogosphere.

As for being asked for permission by an aggregator, I feel (just a feeling) that if you publish an RSS feed, permission to be aggregated is given de facto. If you want a bit more control, one can set up the feed to only show snippets of stories. Do that, and a reader has to visit the blog for the whole story. The downside of that is that people reading your site in a feedreader like bloglines won’t get the whole story. It’s a tradeoff between reader convenience and protecting your traffic, and an RSS publisher has to decide which way to go.

As you said, the webmaster of the aforementioned aggregator does not explicitly or even implicitly try to demonstrate that all content on his site is created by others (judging by the front page only). In fact, he actually has a copyright notice at the bottom of the blog… what exactly is he copyrighting? the code that steals other people’s work? interesting thought though, right?

I would favor an opt-in service, such as Domaining.com , or DNHour.com over this scheme, although there are reasons why I choose not to parttake in these services either at this time… At the very least, the aggregator should approach the blogs he tracks and request PERMISSION TO REPRINT. I’m sure most would not object to having their articles featured on a legitimate source that offers them more extensive exposure as well, as long as the gesture’s there… Or am I just a glutton for formality ? ? ?

I do agree that in this case, availabledomxx.biz, it’s not obvious that the stories are aggregated. That’s more than a bit cheeky. But would you object in principle to, say, the feedzilla way of doing it? I think some RSS advocates would say that news aggregators can benefit all parties; your posts get exposure all over the internet, and hopefully an increase in traffic.