How much screen scraping is legal

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jbard

1377 posts

Uber Geek

#67504 2-Sep-2010 22:54

So i have been playing around doing a bit of screen scraping with coldfusion, i was just wondering if you were to set-up a commercial website which screen scraped off other sites, how much can you do without breaking copyright laws?

I know facebook does a fair bit when you share a link, it usually takes about 500 chars and the main image from the page.

What if someone posts a news article, surely taking any part of that article is breaking copyright law, even if facebook links back to the original site?

hellonearthisman

1819 posts

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Trusted

#376037 2-Sep-2010 23:28

Google search results is a good marker of how much you can scrap.
They do follow robot.txt rules.

Linuxluver

5828 posts

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Subscriber

#376056 3-Sep-2010 00:18

jbard: So i have been playing around doing a bit of screen scraping with coldfusion, i was just wondering if you were to set-up a commercial website which screen scraped off other sites, how much can you do without breaking copyright laws? I know facebook does a fair bit when you share a link, it usually takes about 500 chars and the main image from the page. What if someone posts a news article, surely taking any part of that article is breaking copyright law, even if facebook links back to the original site?

Fair Use means you can use parts of an article to support some point or argument you are making. But you can't include the lot while offering little or no original content.

In our office people cut out articles and post them on a noticeboard for others to read. In the digital realm, that isn't allowed online. But if I print it off and post it on the same noticeboard, it is.

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