LexMonitor launched, important discussion ensues

Last week, while I was recovering from what could best be described as an intellectual hangover after the SLA conference in Seattle, Kevin O’Keefe from LexBlog released a web tool called LexMonitor.

As Kevin describes it:

There has been a lot of coverage of the launch. Binary Law, KM Space, Law Firm Web Strategy, were just some of the bloggers to comment on the launch. Some reviews, like the one at Simply Justice, have been harsh, although to be fair the author retracted some of the harshest comments.

I think the service is good, potentially very good. Any feedback I’d have at the moment has already been suggested by some others.

Like Steve Matthews, my favorite part of the site is the threaded discussions. The ability to see all the blog posts on a certain topic, and the user interface for how they pulled that off is great. I also enjoy that they’ve used RSS for everything. Any information monitoring site that I’m going to use regularly simply has to have lots of RSS options, and LexMonitor has it. I can subscribe to a search, a channel, a discussion, and tags. Just very well done.

I will simply say that it is a great start for the site, and I can see it becoming increasingly useful.

Some of the more interesting discussion can be found in the comments of the Binary Law posts and harks back to an earlier post on that blog dealing with a similar discussion, namely the legality and ethics of using other people’s RSS feeds without permission.

For me this whole discussion is somewhat similar to the discussion of RIAA’s file sharing crackdown. In my opinion, in some instances the RIAA has been legitimately injured, in others they have been over zealous in their prosecution. But overall they have done far more damage to their reputation and brand, and in reality may profit at least a little from file sharing.

Allowing people to use and share your RSS feeds, even for profit, even without your permission is not very different.

Some people may step over the line of what you consider ethical, but as long as an aggregator credits you as the content creator they are assisting in building your brand and reputation. If you are making money off of your own site then they are actually expanding your money making potential. Will some users just read your content from the aggregator? Yes. But some will visit your site, click your links, buy your products, or whatever it is you want them to do.

I know there may be legal implications which I’m not fully aware of, like how trademark owners have to diligently protect their mark. But the legal implications of such actions must be weighed against your personal or corporate brand and reputation.

Meanwhile, if you’re reading this, feel free to include my feeds in any sort of aggregator you see fit. And if it’s worthwhile let me know and I’d be happy to check out your project (but you don’t have to).