Jason Calacanis did a talk on blogs and it was pretty good. The big chain he was going to jerk was on RSS (Really Simple Syndication). He called it Really Simple Stealing.
I got lucky, very lucky and had a pizza with Jason the night before so I knew the bomb was coming.
[Memo to the anti-Jason Calacanis group: stop calling him cheap. He is not a fan of VCs and really doesn't take our money; he paid for the food. Plenty of other shots can be taken but cheap comes off the list.]
Jason talked about this whole notion of a company taking a bunch of feeds, sending them out in the world wrapped up with ad-sense and having that revenue come back to them and not the writers.
In his mind, that's stealing.
I'm sure Dave Winer is not going to be a fan of that comment, to name just one person.
I happen to agree with Jason from the perspective that if my blog, going through a news aggregator is making them a ton of money (fantasy, trust me), that's not fair or right. Stealing from the perspective of breaking the law, no, but stealing from the perspective of taking money out of my pocket, well, yes. At Reboot, I was in the minority of the people that I talked about this topic. I was surprised, given the crowd, of how many people didn't agree.
Jason also makes the good points about Blogs being fact checked quick by the readers and the corrections getting more ink and better placement then traditional media.
Jason is not a fan of 'paid bloggers.' He toned down the previous night's rant. I've said before that I think it is a slippery slope. I didn't mention that I am looking at Marqui as he was paying for the food.
All -n- all, a great talk.
I had never met Jason before and must say that I found him to be every bit as colorful and entertaining as his reputation. "Off Duty" he really is a nice guy trying to grow a business. We shared some good conversation and I hope it's the first of many encounters.
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