Legal, Ethical?

Richard Gaskin ambassador at fourthworld.com
Mon Jul 25 19:27:27 EDT 2005


Mark Greenberg wrote:
> A few times on the list people have mentioned or posted a stack that 
> reads part of a web site's HTML, formats it, and displays it for the 
> stack's user without opening the default browser (e.g., a stock quote or 
> pictures from Google).
> 
> As an educator, I saw potential there.  I experimented with pulling 
> current news stories from the Internet, formatting them for language or 
> social studies assignments, and having the students work on those 
> lessons -- all without opening a browser.  Though I haven't fleshed it 
> out yet, my experiments show that it is possible to do.
> 
> I would like your opinions on whether it is legal and ethical to do 
> this.

California State Law requires me to precede my reply with this disclaimer:

   "I am not an attorney.  If you need the services of an
    attorney you are encouraged to consult a qualified
    professional in your area."

With that out of the way....

The common term for this is "scraping" (as in "scraping content from a 
page"), and policies vary from site to site.  As an educator, it's my 
understanding (limited by the above disclaimer) that you have additional 
options for classroom use under the "fair use" clauses in copyright law 
not available to those of us who might use such materials commercially. 
  Some school districts simplify things for their teachers by publishing 
policy documents outlining their interpretation of "fair use" for their 
teachers and staff.

Most sites state their usage policies on a Copyright page, and provide a 
contact address for anything not addressed there.

The policy in my office is: "When in doubt, contact the site 
administrator and request explicit permission."

A lot of sites depend on ad revenue or have other value derived from 
presenting content in the context they designed.  By scraping the 
content out of their content it can reduce that value, and in some cases 
may cause material harm to the site owner.

--
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World Media Corporation
  __________________________________________________
  Rev tools and more: http://www.fourthworld.com/rev



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