is this legal?

Question

i own a subscription (online) for a newspaper
Is it legal for me to crawl it and put it on my website

Answer 1

NO, it is not legal to post some else’s work without their written consent.

Why go to the site for the on-line newspaper when people can go to your site for the same article instead? If that happens then the ads that people click on your website will make revenue for you and not for the on-line newspaper. You are in effect stealing from them.

You have to ask that on-line newspaper for permission to use their work and you have to credit it. If you want to use that newspaper for a daily post then they will most likely refuse you. However, there is one way that you can get the on-line newspaper to allow you post their content on your website (without having to pay for it); you can post teasers.

If you use My Yahoo for a home page then you can customize it and include top stories from several different areas and services. Yahoo cannot post the story or article itself that would be illegal. But, they post a teaser with a link to the article on the web site of the publisher. That is legal because Yahoo is not stealing their article or taking credit for it. Instead they are attracting more readers to that article.

Yahoo makes a profit every time you click on an ad or something else on their page. Normally this holds for all advertisements, but someone as strong as Yahoo could set up a relationship with small publishers to get paid for each person that they refer to the small publisher's website. This is an effective and common way to handle things on the Internet.

Another way that Yahoo can make a profit is if they agree to take a share of the revenues generated by those people that go to the publisher's website and then press on a advertisement link there. Typical rates are on the order of 1 cent for a thousand clicks, so I am not talking about a lot of money, unless you are a company with worldwide distribution and a huge market share like Yahoo.

For a small business the best way to handle your ticker or screen crawl would be to get permission from the site that you are linking with to include teasers for their articles on your website, with no exchange of money. That is the easiest and safest way to handle things, and has the most chance of getting the on-line newspaper to agree.

Answer 2

If it is a subscription service that you pay for, then making it available for people who do not pay for it is theft.

Answer 3

No, ask the newspaper if you can provide a link to certain stories, may allow you to.