Zee M Kane of TheNextWeb asks me via Twitter:
@gojomo regarding how your comments about us and "comment syndication" - why do you have to automatically go the ultra negative route?
Because you've breached important norms: that I decide where my name and writing appears, and that content contributed to one site isn't bulk-republished at another site for commercial gain.
If you wanted to take occasional hand-selected quotes -- "gojomo at Hacker News makes a good point when he says..." etc. -- that's fair and respectful, even flattering. But scraping and merging every HN comment into your own discussion threads is sleazy, barely a notch above the splogs that grab blocks of others' text unattributed for search-engine spamming.
Attribution is not enough to legitimize the tactic at this indiscriminate scale.
Also: Your presentation removes the threading and feedback mechanisms so important to HN discussions. You add 'nofollow' on the backlinks you do provide. Your iPhone interface includes a prominent YC commenter icon that (when it appears on 7-of-8-comments on your site) implies an affiliation or endorsement where none exists.
The whole thing reeks, and that you don't yet perceive the problem justifies an even more "ultra negative" tone than I've already adopted.
Example of this behaviour: http://thenextweb.com/2009/06/03/bad-news-ibm-apple/
It makes it seem as though the user is commenting on your site; not that you're scraping it off of another site.
By that logic, you give Google, Microsoft and everyone else you write about permission to reprint your content. That can't be your intention, can it?
I'm saying that it looks misleading the way you have it on your page. I don't really care one way or the other, I'm just telling you what it looks like.
By that logic, any and all of the companies you discuss on your site have the right to republish anything you write, since it's "based on their content" (press releases/announcements). Is that "rather reasonable" as well?