July 17th, 2007Open Apology to Oluniyi David Ajao
Allow us to proffer our SINCEREST apologies for using your blog on The Nigerian Super Blog without express permission from you.
Please understand that it is NOT and NEVER SHALL BE our intention to “steal” bloggers content or republish their posts in an unauthorised manner.
The super blog is 17 days old today and we have been receiving a whole lot of feedback (both positive and negative, including yours). These comments have helped us so far in improving upon what we have on ground.
While we do not claim to “know it all” in terms of the usage of this technology, we are actively soliciting feedback from bloggers and readers on our methods so that we can improve and eventually modify the website into something that will be right for everyone in terms of usability and legality.
Apparently, our methods so far has gone down well with a lot of people yet there are exceptions like yours which we take VERY SERIOUSLY.
Once again, accept our MOST SINCERE APOLOGIES for using your content in a manner that has not gone down well with you.
Be informed that we removed your blog from our listings (therefore your posts will no longer show up on the Super Blog) and we are currently in the process of deleting all archived posts from your blog in our database.
Before I close this message though, I wish to make some remarks/clarifications regarding certain specific portions of your post.
No contact information is available on your website
Thanks for this observation. We are sorry about this and shall make the necessary amendments that shall make contacting us easier. We have also decided to include a link on the Super Blog that would allow people to request removal of their blog from the service.
The WHOIS info for the domain name does not contain the contact info of its real owner
The physical address in our whois information BELONGS to the parent company of the project. The email address belongs to our hosts (siteground.com)
I have already left a comment on one of your blog entries but have not heard from you.
Unfortunately we never saw this comment 
It is indeed true that blog aggregators help bring more traffic to one’s blog but yours is not an aggregator
You got that right, ours is not an aggregator. We are only trying to aggregate in a different way.
You’re simply copying and pasting my full blog posts which is completely unacceptable.
Accept our apologies but we are not exactly copying and pasting.
Real blog aggregators use RSS feeds. I have set my RSS feed to only share parts of my blog posts and not the full thing.
Do you really think we can MANUALLY go through 221 blogs every hour, check for updates and then copy and paste onto our blog? My brother, only a mad man would do that I can assure you.
FYI, we use the FeedWordpress plugin for WordPress to automatically aggregate blog content from the RSS feeds of all the blogs in our blogroll every hour. Once again, we use the RSS feeds for each blog.
We do have some blogs that are currently publishing excerpts of their posts as RSS feeds and this also show up as EXCERPTS on the Super Blog. If yours does not show up as an excerpt then it must be due to some other reason and not because we are copying and pasting manually!
But all the same, we do not say this as a justification and still maintain our apologies to you!
NB. My blog is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 License. Yours is not.
Because the content we use does not belong to us, and because different bloggers publish under different licenses, we do not have the authority to license the content.
And finally, The NaijaLive is a volunteer project and the people behind NaijaLive are a friendly and happy group and it is not our intention to step on toes, break rules, look illegal or make people angry. If we are going about things the wrong way, we are very sorry but none of it was done on purpose. This is why we are ACTIVELY soliciting feedback from readers and visitors. We want to learn.
The project is still VERY VERY much in its infantile stage with most of the work being done on weekends. To learn more about this project, please see the post here: About the NaijaLive Project
We love your blog and we’d LOVE any ideas from you!
July 18th, 2007 at 10:55 am
[…] Naijalive.net, apologies […]
July 24th, 2007 at 5:01 pm
[…] NaijaLive Project responded to David’s post expressing their sincere apologies. They posted the apology on their site and on David’s blog: Apparently, our methods so far has gone down well with a lot of people […]
July 25th, 2007 at 9:40 pm
I don’t think it’s as serious as this david ajao guy is taking it. It’s only cos he’s a well known blogger. I bet if he was a new blogger tryna build traffic he wouldn’t mind.
Anyone who has a blog and the blog has an RSS feed is automatically giving the public permission to copy his/her content. So for example if I was a reader of your blog and I added your feed to any reader I have (could be web based & public too) you’ll come yell at me for doing so. It’s up to the blogger to choose a blog engine that has RSS restriction or even no RSS feed at all.
RSS==SHARING WITH THE PUBLIC!!!!
It’s called SYNDICATION!!!
I run www.sturvs.com and import some blogs the same way you guys here do. I asked for permission for some and didn’t for others, and I’m very sure I wont be making any open apology to anyone for adding their RSS feed to my website, after all I’m linking back to their post each time. Last last I’ll take the person off.
July 25th, 2007 at 10:03 pm
In fact David Ajao’s Creative Commons License can be found here: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/ which states:
You are free:
* to Share — to copy, distribute and transmit the work
* to Remix — to adapt the work
Under the following conditions:
*Attribution. You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work).
*Share Alike. If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license to this one.
And I don’t believe naijalive was altering, transforming or building upon his work…so naijalive falls under the attribution condition, which is done since each article links back to him and has his blog’s name on it. It also says nobody needs him to endorse them or their use of his work! So there isn’t really a case. I should put up a comprehensive blog post about this cos it bothers me how anal people can be.