• CNet, Thursday, April 9, 2009 11:45 AM

Publishers are up in arms over the controversial practice of news aggregation. Recently, Robert Thomson, the managing editor of The Wall Street Journal, called sites like TechMeme, a popular tech news aggregator, a "tech tapeworm in the intestines of the Internet." Dean Singleton, chairman of The Associated Press, had this to say about the practice: "We're mad as hell and we're not going to take it anymore."

In an interview with CNet, TechMeme founder Gabe Rivera argues that news aggregators serve only to promote content. "All successful Web publishers want their content quoted and linked," Rivera said in an email. "The benefits are clear. Some prefer that the quotes remain short...these are precisely the kind that Google and Techmeme use. So for AP and News Corp. to discourage quoting is a clue that they don't really get the Web and are in danger of shooting themselves in the foot."

Meanwhile, Rivera points out that both The Wall Street Journal and New York Times aggregate content, too. "Both maintain sections which quote headlines from external sites. So, constituents of these organizations already know aggregation is useful and fair. This knowledge just hasn't reached AP's and News Corp.'s leadership."

Read the whole story at CNet »