

Ask HN: Legality of Republishing News (a la Google News) - johns

We're working on a service that would benefit from displaying current news headlines and summaries along with other content, some of which is advertising (this is not for a web site, but I can't get into too many specifics).<p>We've looked at every major news source's RSS feeds, but none of their terms of use allow for non-commercial use. One lawyer told us we had as much right to use the headlines and summaries as Google News does and that "non-commercial use" meant that we couldn't resell the content. I find this hard to believe.<p>So my question is, where's the line for what we can freely use and what we can't? Does Google News get special treatment because of the traffic it drives?
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shafqat
We use feeds at NewsCred. We've done a lot of research into fair use, and it
all depends on the factors mentioned by nostrademons in the comment below.
Really depends on what you are planning on doing with/around the news.I would
suggest just going for it - if you get sued, you'll get the publicity!

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wmf
Fair use is an exception to copyright, so it still applies even if a feed says
"you can't do anything with this data". I don't know whether fair use applies
in your case.

Google News certainly gets special treatment, but in the opposite way you
intended: they've been sued by newspapers and newswires for behavior that
appears totally legal to many observers.
<http://news.cnet.com/2100-1030_3-6174008.html>

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nostrademons
You'd take the word of random hackers on the Internet over that of your
lawyer?

Fair use is complicated, and depends on a lot of factors like:

a.) how much of the original work you take

b.) how much of your work this constitutes

c.) commercial or non-commercial?

d.) do you have a positive or negative impact on the original copyright
holder's business?

There likely isn't a "right" answer until you get sued and a jury decides one
way or another. But I think it's highly likely that a lawyer you're paying for
can give better advice than we can.

~~~
johns
This is not the lawyer's area of specialty.

