RE: [syndication] Copyright and Syndication

[Daniel Docekal <ddoc@mia.cz>]

> > Whole business of syndication rises and falls on one 
> condition - that one
> > who you are "harvesting" does have nothing against this - 
> by law you are on
> > edge of copyright protection with the fact of continuous 
> harvesting and
> > using that derivate for other purposes.
> 
> In the US we have the "fair use" clause, allowing us to use 
> copyrighted
> material for some purposes. I believe that syndication would 
> fall under the
> fair use clause, but I don't believe the issue has ever gone 
> to the courts.

Yes, "fair use" is part of _international_ copyright law. And i can say you
for sure, that syndication is not falling into fair use.

> A relevant precedent is the eBay Vs. Bidder's Edge case where 
> the judge
> recently ruled that the Bidder's Edge robot "trespassed" on 
> eBay's property
> by crawling it's site. If this decision stands it would 
> likely mean that
> syndication without the permission of the creator is not OK. 
> I guess that
> would mean it's time to move to HavenCo. :-)

Exactly, syndication _is_ not ok, as far as YOU are the one who actively and
without prior agreement (give explicitly or implicit) are doing harvesting. 

We can harvest anything that was give "out" by means of to be harvested -
thus all RSS/XML feeds are free to harvest, but still you have to compy with
possible conditions of use (eg displaying link, not modifying, and so on).

Try to trust me in this, we run business which as part of it does data
"harvesting" - without appropriate agreement we are out of business already.
And we have spent a fortune on having lawyers backing it :)

Daniel