RSS Reader That Converts RSS into Voice … Genius and Theft

RSS DJ is a new RSS Reader that can take any RSS feed and automatically convert it to spoken word MP3.

“RSS DJ is a new style of RSS aggregator. It can take any text based RSS feed (blogs, news feeds, anything), and automatically convert them to spoken word MP3 podcasts. You can even create your own “Mixes” combining feeds based on tags, freshness, and peer ratings.”

Really an engenius concept, and my hat goes down to the visionaries that created this tool, which I’m sure will find many takers.

But the Reader also comes as a bad sign of where the RSS industry might be heading:

a] It can strip ads from RSS feeds, actually stripping publishers of their income, even though they are providing these RSS feeds as a free service.

Why can’t people understand that RSS feeds are meant to be consumed the way they have been published … if that means with ads, it means with ads.

And if a publisher gives his content away from free, expecting some compensation from his ad space sales, isn’t automatically blocking his ads in some way stealing?

End-users always have the choice of subscribing to feeds with ads or no ads, but they shouldn’t have a choice of blocking the ads if the publisher decided this is how he wants to support his work.

b] The Reader will also scrap sites without RSS feeds, giving its users the possibility of consuming new content from the site as if they were subscribing to its RSS feed.

Unfortunatelly, although this might be a good end-user application, I can’t help but think that this again is some sort of theft, using content in ways the publisher has not intended, and stripping his website ads along the way.

If this becomes a trend, how can internet users expect to keep receiving the content they love for free, if they are at the same time preventing the publisher from getting fair compensation for his work?

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