RSS has been stated as one of the top trends to transform journalism by easily allowing viewers to stay updated on the latest news and articles. However, EJC Journalist Jonathan Bailey cautions that there are ethical and legal issues if someone's RSS content is pasted onto a site without permission.

RSS is supposed to be used in a private reader, which organizes large amounts of content from many web sites. This content is available only to those who subscribe to the specific RSS feed. Spam blogs or web sites take the content and republish it, known as "scraping," and are regularly shut down due to copyright infringement. Scraping takes away audience from the original site, decreasing its ranking in search engines. Furthermore, the original author becomes further removed from his/her content.

To avoid copyright issues, Bailey suggests using a headline widget to link back to the original site for the complete article. Though many sites accept this, Bailey recommends asking for permission anyway. Also, look through the sites the RSS publishes in case it links to questionable material.

Source: EJC