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Site creators have the freedom to produce what they want, and users likewise have the freedom to consume how they want.

I think so too. I use RSS as a very minimalist blog and have had good experiences with it so far. It's hard to monetize the format, but it really draws a lot of people to my side.

Do they? I'm fairly certain they don't. Otherwise everyone would just be torrenting and stripping commercials.

Torrenting is illegal because you (generally) weren't authorized to make a copy. Stripping commercials isn't because you're removing something, or changing the way you read it. There might be some legal case if you have to make another copy of media in order to alter your consumption, but thank God I'm aware of no case attempting to control your personal use of media.

(DMCA doesn't count, it's about circumventing things that prevent you from copying, not change your consumption.)

Just to this point, an example: My parents' VCR had a built-in feature that would automatically fast-forward through commercials when playing back something that it recorded.

Sure, as a broad absolutist statement there's plenty of practical, legal, metaphysical holes you could poke in it.

Not aware of any anti-user-made RSS laws, though.

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