I have been experimenting with a new service called DailyMe. It is a web/email news service that operates very similar to a current newspaper. It has syndication arrangements with news sources that supply this type of news, like Associated Press and the International Herald Tribune. They categorise the news and supply you feeds of top news that meets your categories. They (eventually) pay for the syndicated feeds and the cost of distribution by the ads they place on the pages.
On the surface they show the due respect to the information they syndicate. They attribute the source, and if required credit the author. In the few AP articles I have cross checked they do no editorial on the articles, simply repost them. They do not give any web links back to the originator, but that is normal for print, and probably covered in the terms of their contract. A newspaper article would be expected to do no more, even if it appeared on their webpage as well as their print version.
What concerns me about the site is that they try and increase traffic outside of their subscription service through social tagging. The following article sourced from USA Today show what I mean. The article is properly attributed but contains no links to the USA Today originating article. What is on the bottom though is an all too familiar social bookmarking applet, allowing readers to post the article to sites like Stumbleupon or Digg. This seems to me like a line crossed, even if that line is a bit fuzzy.
The syndication arrangement allows you to use the content to produce revenue. I feel there is a difference between publishing that content to subscribers and using that content as an advertisement for your site. This is essentially what they are doing, a Digg post that links to DailyMe is attracting new users to their site. The user is not being attracted by a feature of DailyMe, they are being attracted by a reprinted article. This seems to be at least misrepresentation regardless of whether the article originator is happy about this or not.
It definitely goes beyond the spirit of social bookmarking. The ideal is that the original source of the information should get the credit, and link love. If a page, article or blog post references another site, but adds worthwhile commentary, analysis or perspective then that is a separate matter, however I do not agree with attempting to get traffic by promoting reprinted articles.