legal, websiteI am filling up a database for venues and wanted to include things such as drink price etc. This information is fragmented across facebook and the venue’s websites.
Are there any legal issues if I were to take the info from both those places and put it in my online database?
I am filling up a database for venues and wanted to include things such as drink price etc. This information is fragmented across facebook and the venue’s websites.
Are there any legal issues if I were to take the info from both those places and put it in my online database?
Short answer:
Yes.
Long answer:
It depends on the legal system of your country. Some countries don’t have any law regarding copyright / plagiarism, some countries do have law. That said, there are some ‘general’ rules that seem to apply in most situations:
Basically the original author of the work holds the intellectual property. That basically means that if the author doesn’t want you to have it, you cannot use it. Now, since he’s publishing the work (I assume on a public profile!) you can assume that he implicitly allows you to use it.
That said, you cannot claim it is your own work. Basically this means that if you use it, you should hold a backreference to the original URL and be transparent that you don’t claim any rights. If the owner asks you to remove the data, you must comply.
Now, things also depend on the definition of plagiarism in your legal area. Usually the definition tells that copying a few lines is okay – and everything beyond that is considered plagiarism.
Aggregating data (e.g. creating derived work based on a ‘fairly large’ variety of sources) is usually considered ‘creating new work’ and is therefore allowed. Again, you use information from sources as your information sources, so you should be transparent about that and provide them with the option to remove their content from your database.
If you just copy data from one website and host it by yourself, you’re usually in the ‘black part’ of the ‘gray area’; if you’re aggregating information from multiple websites (e.g. Google), you’re more in the ‘white part’.
Things like complying with robots.txt and being polite when building web crawlers are very much in the gray area, but my strong recommendation is to simply comply with them. Similarly, fill in your robot ID with a webpage that contains information people can use to remove content, how the crawler works, etc. Best not to get blocked from a website when it can be avoided.
If you extract certain pieces of information from the content, in particular: personal information such as address, telephone numbers, contact information, etc, you usually fall within another area of the legal system. Best to be very, very careful about this and check this with the correct privacy institute or a good lawyer. (F.ex. in the Netherlands this is the “CBP - College Bescherming Persoonsgegevens” - which is roughly translated as ‘government privacy institute’).
Either way, if you’re in doubt, best to check with a lawyer.
You’re in a gray zone.
For what it’s worth, there’s an old management adage that goes: ‘tis better to apologize later, than ask for permission first.’
Legal issues would depend on the information you are copying. Plagiarizing Text, code, and proprietary information is usually a no go. You can get this information by simply asking them then giving proper accreditation.
If you are simply compiling a list of prices for their various products or price lists from various vendors, I would say you’re fine. You could include a disclaimer of when and where the prices were obtained.
Later down the road when you are more established business, consult a layer. Legal battles simply aren’t worth it destroying your entire business.
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