It's always been a gray area. For myself, I think the acid test is whether the information presented by the format is altered (the format itself shouldn't matter). So long as the modifications present the information accurately, preserve any required copyright/licensing, and only reduce (not add) information (as with normalisation a lot), it should be fine. Adding information is often hard if it can be viewed downstream as the work of the original source. The licensing is the sticky bit - many licenses require attribution to be made clear when copying/distributing. In my mind, any normalisation which removes a license/copyright would be in breach by default - no question in my mind. It's ethically unsound to strip such information in my opinion.
Paddy Pádraic Brady http://blog.astrumfutura.com http://www.survivethedeepend.com OpenID Europe Foundation Irish Representative ________________________________ From: Matthew Terenzio <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Mon, December 28, 2009 7:16:46 PM Subject: Re: [pubsubhubbub] Normalizing Fat Pings to Atom BTW, I'm not saying it's wrong to do. That is between a service and it's customers. Just that it shouldn't be part of a spec because of the considerations mentioned. On Mon, Dec 28, 2009 at 2:13 PM, Matthew Terenzio <[email protected]> wrote: Does a hub have a right (legal or ethical) to modify a feed in any way before delivery? > >Yes, I choose the hub, but the spec allows for federation. Could three hubs >down the chain take my feed and make modifications to it that may not be to my >liking? > >I hope not. Maybe Corp A doesn't want their feed being converted to Corp B's >protocol. > > >
