Steve:

The TOS and privacy policy contain the official answer - but my informal response.

At some point in the future a subset of our users - particularly publishers - may want to make the metadata from what they submit to us widely accessible. Given that one of their goals is to maximize "findability" They may be interested if Calais can syndicate their metadata or somehow make that metadata available for search.

At some point in the future we may offer something like that - perhaps an RSS feed of items that meet certain criteria like acquisitions or California and Natural Disaster or ... whatever.

These parameters essentially allow you to opt in or out of that possible future functionality. If we ever do put that functionality on the roadmap we'll give everyone a long-term heads up that it's coming.

Regards,