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Answered Question
M$5.60
October 14, 2009 12:34 AM
Is republishing of whole pages of copyrighted web pages ever legitimate / fair use?
Here's an example for context. Consider an enterprise that scrapes publicly available information on the web looking for particular topics and republishes this information in whole. This is along the lines of aboutus.org. Another contrived example would be a search engine that shows the entire web page for each search hit. I'm wonder if this is legitimate / legal / fair use with respect to copyright.
This sort of thing gives me the ick.
Search engines, web aggregators and sites like Mahalo show snippets of web pages along with the link, which I understand is considered fair use.
Showing the meat--the important part--of a web page or any other work is considered republishing, which can violate fair use. But what if there is no economic impact from the republishing?
So is there any context in which this sort of republishing is OK?
Am I off base? Am I understanding the issues?
This sort of thing gives me the ick.
Search engines, web aggregators and sites like Mahalo show snippets of web pages along with the link, which I understand is considered fair use.
Showing the meat--the important part--of a web page or any other work is considered republishing, which can violate fair use. But what if there is no economic impact from the republishing?
So is there any context in which this sort of republishing is OK?
Am I off base? Am I understanding the issues?
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Interesting: robbrown M$0.05, buddawiggi M$0.05, jasoncalacanis M$0.50
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- Tags: webscraping, webtextmining, fairuse, webharvesting, copyright |
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Best Answer Chosen by Asker
| October 14, 2009 06:54 PM |
There's a simple answer and a complicated answer.
The simple answer is it is rarely legitimate, and rarely covered by fair use.
The complicated answer is that if you take the word "ever" seriously in your question, yes there are a variety of scenarios in which it could be legitimate and/or fair use. Some of those scenarios...
- The material is copyrighted and licenced in such a way that it is available for republication. For example Creative Commons (CC) or GNU Free Document Licences (GFDL) do not negate copyright, rather they confer various specific rights of re-use. So for example you're entirely within your right to copy most Wikipedia articles, or entire posts from many a CC-licenced blog.
- The "page" is actually so short that copying it in full doesn't amount to copying a large amount of material, but maybe just a paragraph or two.
- You are a public figure, and the text is newsworthy. There may be a fair use defense to reproducing your material as part of a news report, along the lines of "This is what Barack Obama wrote about the issue in his blog in 2004". Whether the fair use defense works out for you might depend on just how much material you reproduced and just how newsworthy it was.
- As @robbrown mentioned, there may be exemptions for archives and caches and such like. If I have saved a copy of your material for future reference in something like Furl or Evernote, that's probably legit and legal.
This isn't an exhaustive list, but it suggests some of the ethical complexity and the problems of trying to make laws about this kind of thing.
Want to know more about copyright and fair use?
The mother of all resources is provided by Stanford University:
http://fairuse.stanford.edu/
http://fairuse.stanford.edu/Copyright_and_Fair_Use_Overview/chapter9/
Personally I love this video on fair use, which was made Professor Eric Faden of Bucknell University and is available from Stanford Law School.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJn_jC4FNDo
| Asker's Rating: |
• Many answers were illuminating, however answer both was to the point and linked to a great source for further learning: The Standford Fair Use Project. I had looked at this before asking the question, but had not found that particular chapter reference nor the video.
What I've really internalized is that fair use is a defense. All use of copyrighted material could be infringement, with fair use being a defense argument.
Thanks for all the help guys.
What I've really internalized is that fair use is a defense. All use of copyrighted material could be infringement, with fair use being a defense argument.
Thanks for all the help guys.
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Other Answers (6)
October 14, 2009 12:48 AM
It sounds like you have a good grasp of the copyright implications of content reproduction and "scraping". Generally, content duplication is frowned upon online. It is also somewhat illegal. I say somewhat because the DCMA laws surrounding copyright, fair use and online distribution of audio, video, images and text is vague and general.
In other words, initiating a legal battle based on scraping / content duplication would be an uphill battle. I believe in the legal system and as a result, I think that the content owner would prevail.
I personally consider content duplication ok in 3 cases:
1)
If the content is allowed to be distributed. Many websites (lifehacker.com for example) license their content under the creative commons. As long as you attribute the origional author and site, they'd like you to link to and quote their articles. This of course doesn't mean complete copy-and-paste. But it's fair to use part of an article.
2)
If the content is being used as an "anchor". I consider what Mahalo does in their Image blocks, video blocks, etc as duplicating content to create an anchor. In short, they copy small bits of content to attract people to the originating site.
3)
Last, if the content duplication is occurring to create an archive AND there is an opt out. Take the WayBack Machine for example: http://www.archive.org/ Since almost the advent of the Internet, these guys have been copying index pages. There is an easy way to opt out and this project is for good, not evil. So, I consider it acceptable.
These are all personal opinions based on my personal experience and deep interest in copyright protection online.
Welcome to Mahalo, Rick.
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rickmode
October 14, 2009 08:35 AM
I had not read about case #3 here. I had been wondering about cached pages on Google as well as the Internet Archive.
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October 14, 2009 09:58 AM
Yeah, Cached pages not only on Google but on our own local computers fall under #3.
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October 14, 2009 02:26 AM
You can improve this answer by elaborating. This one line answer is too vague to be helpful.
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October 14, 2009 02:48 AM
LMAO!!!!!!!
It can be read many ways.
If you are using something copyrighted and are neither profitting from its use nor making a commercial statement about it and you give explicit notice to your readers that you are quoting a copyrighted source and that they are not to use your quoting for profit then it is technically legal.
Sorry that was one sentence but it was longer and clearer. Amidoinitrite?
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It can be read many ways.
If you are using something copyrighted and are neither profitting from its use nor making a commercial statement about it and you give explicit notice to your readers that you are quoting a copyrighted source and that they are not to use your quoting for profit then it is technically legal.
Sorry that was one sentence but it was longer and clearer. Amidoinitrite?
October 14, 2009 03:02 PM
That is NOT true. It is not technically legal at all to use a copyrighted source, whether you're profiting from it or not.
The only reason profit falls into the equation is to determine damage to the copyright owner, if damage occurs because the other person was making a profit.
If profit were a necessary requirement, the people who post videos on YouTube who don't get paid a dime for doing so would not be being required to remove their videos.
The copyright owner holds the right to the copyright and NO ONE can disseminate that information without permission or license, unless it's under fair use (which is allowable for only very specific situations and does NOT include profit as one of the litmus tests).
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The only reason profit falls into the equation is to determine damage to the copyright owner, if damage occurs because the other person was making a profit.
If profit were a necessary requirement, the people who post videos on YouTube who don't get paid a dime for doing so would not be being required to remove their videos.
The copyright owner holds the right to the copyright and NO ONE can disseminate that information without permission or license, unless it's under fair use (which is allowable for only very specific situations and does NOT include profit as one of the litmus tests).
October 14, 2009 04:27 AM
Strabismus you are incorrect. The standard is if you are taking away from the originator's profits,
not if you yourself are profiting.
Source(s):
http://help.blogger.com/bin/request.py?contact_type=blogger_dmca_infringmen...
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October 14, 2009 04:43 AM
Well that's odd (not to mention riddled with logical dubiety). Btw, thanks for not commenting to my post but posting separately to answer me. That really made sense. Not.
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October 14, 2009 08:48 AM
So if you copy and paste (by any means) the entire contents of something like an eBay auction or a house listing, and link back to it, one could argue this enhances the listing site: there is a new and better way to find the listing.
One could also counter-argue: less time is spent at the listing site finding the listing leading to less ad impressions.
If the argument holds, does this economic argument justify copying the listing verbatim in this case?
In other words, if there is no negative economic impact to the copyright holder for a republication, does this constitute fair use?
(By the way, your link doesn't refer to economic impact; I only see infringement and DCMA takedown stuff.)
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One could also counter-argue: less time is spent at the listing site finding the listing leading to less ad impressions.
If the argument holds, does this economic argument justify copying the listing verbatim in this case?
In other words, if there is no negative economic impact to the copyright holder for a republication, does this constitute fair use?
(By the way, your link doesn't refer to economic impact; I only see infringement and DCMA takedown stuff.)
October 14, 2009 03:05 PM
Rick, I'm afraid that doesn't work. If the person can get all the information from your page (the copied one) there is zero incentive to visit the listing. For example, if I write an article on a website and you put the entire article on your website, with a link to my article, why would anyone go read my article if they find it through yours first? They wouldn't, because they already have all they need.
If you put a snippet to my article and a link, though, and they are interested in the snippet, the link will entice them to go to my article, thus it is benefiting both you on your site and me on my article site.
Without permission or license, it is illegal to put the entire listing, site, writing, etc, on your website, with or without attribution.
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If you put a snippet to my article and a link, though, and they are interested in the snippet, the link will entice them to go to my article, thus it is benefiting both you on your site and me on my article site.
Without permission or license, it is illegal to put the entire listing, site, writing, etc, on your website, with or without attribution.
October 14, 2009 06:22 PM
Michelle, it sounds like the ebay example is a good one. Any viewers of the content will *have* to go to the original page to take action, so in this case more publicity is definitely a good thing. It might be illegal, but I for one wouldn't be mad if somebody tried to give my auction more publicity.
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October 15, 2009 07:08 AM
@antihero - you're right in a situation like that, it would likely help the seller. The problem is, when you let one person do it for one site, they don't always understand why they can't do it for every site.
I personally think it's best to just leave it as--don't copy without permission or license--so there's no confusion or mistakes. It's not usually hard to get permission to copy something though if you know how to get in touch with the person. Always better safe than sorry!
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I personally think it's best to just leave it as--don't copy without permission or license--so there's no confusion or mistakes. It's not usually hard to get permission to copy something though if you know how to get in touch with the person. Always better safe than sorry!
October 14, 2009 06:34 AM
I do not see how showing the "meat and potatoes" could be an acceptable way to list a website in a search engine. The site loses money if the web owner is affiliated with Google's Adsense program. So the showing of the site means the visitor did not physically click on the link and the web owner did not gain the page view to generate the income for that page view. *sorry if I rambled..it's 3am here and I've been up for awhile.
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October 14, 2009 03:09 PM
Exactly right - but it's more than JUST adsense revenue too. It has to do with traffic as well. One of the things that is used to determine the value of a website is traffic, to and from the site, and if someone gets information from another website and never clicks through to your site, you might have a great informative site, but if it has no traffic (because the traffic is flowing to someone else using your information) then your site is deemed 'worth less' (not worthless, but worth less) by Google (PageRank, etc) and other search engines, as well as sites like Alexa that rank websites and their traffic.
If you ever wanted to sell a website, traffic is crucial to be accurate.
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If you ever wanted to sell a website, traffic is crucial to be accurate.
October 14, 2009 01:28 PM
-quote- He had the options of posting them on a password-protected Web page and giving the ... or at least implied consent to republish the material, was reasonably .... to the copyrighted work as a whole; and the effect of the use on the potential .... Arguments that Private Use Copying is not Fair Use Some rights holders ...
-endquote-
Source(s):
http://www.google.co.in/#hl=en&q=Is+republishing+of+whole+pages+of+copy...
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October 14, 2009 02:57 PM
There is NO situation in which this is acceptable without the permission of the copyright holder/owner through either gaining permission verbally or in writing (in writing is always best to protect yourself) and/or through a license to use of some sort. Search engines argue that they can get away with some of this because they are 'search engines' but they really can't. Even Google Images uses a great scaled down version of the thumbnail of the image when they do images and then links to the original. They only do the 'snippet' and a link.
Websites that scape content (usually by scraping the feeds) are reprehensible and usually illegal.
More often then not, they will eventually get shut down, because it's nearly impossible for them to monetize scraping for long-term profitability.
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October 14, 2009 10:30 PM
Google Images is a bit of a conundrum so to speak.
However, search engines in general MUST cache / duplicate content.
Search engines such as google have a shocking amount of people pulling results. If search engines didn't do this, the web simply wouldn't be the same.
There are technical ways to limit web pages from being scraped. From robot.txt files to htaccess files to password protection, a website owner has a reasonable amount of control over how much a legitimate search engine will retrieve.
I take copyright and distribution very seriously, but I also think it is important not to limit technology by laws. It's a two way street and quite simply if you want your content online, I think that there must be some "give and take".
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However, search engines in general MUST cache / duplicate content.
Search engines such as google have a shocking amount of people pulling results. If search engines didn't do this, the web simply wouldn't be the same.
There are technical ways to limit web pages from being scraped. From robot.txt files to htaccess files to password protection, a website owner has a reasonable amount of control over how much a legitimate search engine will retrieve.
I take copyright and distribution very seriously, but I also think it is important not to limit technology by laws. It's a two way street and quite simply if you want your content online, I think that there must be some "give and take".
October 15, 2009 07:06 AM
You're right - they must 'cache' it, but interestingly enough, Google uses your pages for the cache - that is, if you have analytics or code on your page, it shows that code in the cache too. I see it all the time on my website where someone got to a cache pages and actually even clicked on an ad! It was my ad code... so I'm wondering if that's part of how they get away with it, since it's really my code?
the internet is growing faster than the legal field can keep up...
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the internet is growing faster than the legal field can keep up...
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