Sunday, April 25, 2004

Ideas, conversations and thievery. The more I think about this, the more concerned I become that we are developing a selfish culture with know appreciation of the values of conversation, shared ideas and communities, but that's another essay for another day. From Scoble: My aggregator blog called "theft". Inluminent calls quoteblogs (like my experimental aggregator blog) theft. Scoble is posting other's thoughts, ideas - with full attribution.  So what's the harm? If you take Inluminent's position, then the entire model of non-fiction writing, reporting and research will be subject to cadres of lawyers and even worse, copyright clerks, creating a backlog on decent thoughts. Ideas aren't meant to be owned, they are meant to be shared.  By sharing ideas, actions take place.  Actions create opportunities for growth (economically, academically, spiritually).  For example, listen to what Scoble says here: I've gotten a lot of feedback that my aggregator blog is actually driving a lot of traffic back to blogs. Why? Because people want to subscribe to the blogs that are interesting and my aggregator blog is a good way to get a sense of what the author is like. It's like advertising for blogs. [Scobleizer: Microsoft Geek Blogger] You see, Scoble's decision to include a blog piece brings value to the piece and the blogger.  Those that respect Scoble's opinion take action and link to the original blog.  If that blogger has more than one interesting thought, notion, or is just plain entertaining, then the blogger gains a reader. If you don't share your thought, your idea - how can you have a conversation?  In a later post, Scoble concurs with this sentiment: You can reuse my blog's content By the way, if other people want to reuse (or "reblog") my content, I give full permission as long as there's a link back to my blog, and clear credit given that I wrote the content. Why? I appreciate when someone aggregates my blog, pulls out what's useful, posts it with other people's stuff, and/or does something else useful with it. That adds value to my work here. Not everything I write is good. I think it's part of being in the blogosphere. An attitude of sharing [Scoble] He also decided to stop the experimental blog.  Oh, bother! comment [] 6:15:12 AM