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Ethier way, I don't think "using rss feeds from someone else's server" is violating their tos, but the place you get them from might. Or they might not.
Google needs to put out rss feeds! I'm sure they already have them, just not publicly available.
I see any feed that scrapes content, formats it into any format including RSS, and parses it on to your own server without the permission of the content provider is a bit rich! Now if they provided their own RSS feed no problem and i would be one of the first to do it, especially if it was like Daypop where you can have RSS generated from any keyword search.
I think we discussed this in a thread here about a month ago but cant find it.
well Google gave me the link
[google.com...]
As for Terms of service, googlebot ignores terms of service doesn't it.
Webmasterworld TOS :
23. You will not copy and retransmit any information out of these forums without first getting the permission of the original author of the message and a WebmasterWorld.com administrator.
So if google copies a message without asking me, it is violating Webmasterworlds terms of service. Now my point is, while I like google etc, Sometimes terms of service have to come after common sense.
If thats not crazy enough, how about this :
from [google.com...]
The Google Services are made available for your personal, non-commercial use only. You may not use the Google Services to sell a product or service, or to increase traffic to your Web site for commercial reasons, such as advertising sales.
So, using google to increase traffic to your site so you sell more products is against their terms of service. Doesn't that make everyone here violaters?
Whats one more broken rule..
Now, all that said, if I use those rss feeds, I'm not violating anyones terms of service. Sure they might be, just like google might be breaking webmasterworlds terms of service by caching ( i.e. retransmitting) this message without asking me first.
edit- one more thing - brett : " If they would give it away in an rss feed, no one would have any reason to visit the site. "
if they gave them away for a non commercial, non-reproduction purpose, such as a news ticker, the 99% of users who are not geeks and don't have news tickers ( that take custom rss xml feeds ) would still visit the site.