[thelist] Data Mining

[deke]

On 1 Jan 2002 at 5:57, Aleem posted a message which said:

> Hi, I had q question about data mining. I am intending to extract data
> from some directory on the web. I would assume since the data is in the
> public domain it would be legal to download and reuse it on my website.
> Am I wrong ?

If it *truly* is in the public domain, yes. 

You have to be careful, though. There's no copyright on public laws, 
but WestLaw copyrights the organization and presentation of their 
compilations of law.

You might want to take a look at the legal fights that eBay has engaged 
in. Other sites decided to "deep link" both eBay and eBay's 
competitors, so that people who were looking to buy merchandise at 
auction didn't have to surf all over the web trying to compare 
auctions. Since eBay has an overwhelming lead, they didn't like that. 
Without the other sites, people have a tendency to look *only* at eBay, 
and that preserves eBay's advantage. 

The courts decided that eBay not only could block spiders from these 
aggregators' sites, but was entitled to a court order insisting that 
these other sites follow the eBay TOS prohibiting such spidering.

deke





deke
--------
We are the parents our people warned us about....