Here's my biggest problem with the new "Hosted Conversations" product resulting from a partnership between PR firm Edelman and RSS reader Newsgator.

Well first maybe a little background is in order. "Hosted Conversations" scours consumer-generated content such as blog posts and videos, grabs little snippets that are relevant to an advertiser and delivers that snippet dynamically to an online ad of some sort. Those updates come via an RSS component in the widget that jacks the feed.

So what's my problem? It's the appropriation of content.
Let me give an example. Let's say that on my personal blog I write something positive about an upcoming movie. That's fine. But then the studio behind that movie, if they were participating in one of these "Hosted Conversations," could just grab a quote from me and use it as they see fit. That's a real problem to me. I never agreed to any such usage and, since it is actually using my content for monetary gain, violates the Creative Commons license I have on my blog that says I am not permitting usage of the content for monetary gain. While there is an opt-out option that's not enough. Don't take and then make the person beg for you to stop. Ask permission first. Make it a sign-up deal. And saying that complaints will be dealt with on a case-by-case basis is not acceptable. If someone wants out then they should be able to instantaneously take their feed out of the system.

Yes, I realize that "blurbing" is an accepted practice on movie posters and such but this is not a movie poster. This is dangerously close to content theft in my opinion and I don't like it.