Can I copy content from the CIA World Factbook

[Latino2008]

Hi guys, I want to know if I can copy content from their Factbook.

This is what their copyright page said: "The Factbook is in the public domain. Accordingly, it may be copied freely without permission of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)."

Here it's that link: "https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/docs/contributor_copyright.html"

Does this mean I am allow to copy exactly or do I have to rewrite it on my own words?

I'm OK with these pages being on the supplemental index, because this info will be on sub-pages that I don't care to rank high for search engines. I just don't want my whole website to be penalized by doing this, and also I don't want to break any copyright laws.

By the way, the reason I prefer to just copy instead of rewriting on my own it's because I have to do this for 200 pages, which each page will have about 3 paragraphs copy from the Factbook. And these 3 paragraphs will be the volume of about 30% of my content for each page.

Can anyone tell me if I'm allow to do this legally and without getting penalized by the search engine on my whole website?

[g1smd]

Which bit didn't you understand?

*** The Factbook is in the public domain. Accordingly, it may be copied freely without permission of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The official seal of the CIA, however, may NOT be copied without permission ***

[janharders]

Which bit didn't you understand?

can you ever be too careful when you're dealing with a entitity that can have ninja assassins in your home within the minute? ;)

[purplecape]

You can copy it.

Whether you will be penalized I don't know--my understanding of the duplicate content "penalty" is that pages that consist of duplicate content just don't appear in the results of a search. If 70% of your content is original, I tend to doubt that you will have a problem, but I think the only way to know for sure is to test it out. Put up your content. Then if it's not appearing as you had hoped it would, start to rewrite the factbook data.

[Syzygy]

The same question was asked here just recently.

[webmasterworld.com...]

So, there's at least two of you with potentially identical content... ;-)

Syzygy

[farmboy]

When using content from a U.S. Government site, it's important to read any notes/disclaimers associated with the article, database, pics, etc.

Sometimes content on the site was developed by contractors, etc. and is not in the public domain. They usually make it clear which content is and is not in the public domain.

FarmBoy

[Marineclub]

As i know u dont be penalized, but im unsure that exact copy of content will be cached by seach engines. So, it may be time wasting if you want simply growth your content.

[wolfadeus]

I have copied content from the CIA factbook.

My experience:

1.) Yes, you may do it.

2.) Yes, you will be penalised by search engine for having dupli...millionised content.

[Latino2008]

Ok, I will get penalised for that particular page, but now what happens if I have a page call, for example:

Page1.php

On that page I have a menu, when you click on one of the links this page will load: "Page1.php?cmd=Facts" with the CIA Factbook content in it. I'm putting a (rel="nofollow") on that particular link, so that the spider won't follow that link.

Now, all this content will be loading from a database, so what I'm trying to say is that when you first open the page: Page1.php you will only see the content that I want the search engine to see which is the content from Page1.php without the CIA Factbook content.

Now my questions is, will the spider consider Page1.php?cmd=Facts the same as Page1.php even thought the spider won't see the content of the Facts link unless some one click on that link.

Hopefully you guys can understand what I'm trying to say, and help me out with this question.

PS. I'm not doing anything illegal, I'm not hiding anything, I just want the spider to see my main pages and no the sub-pages.

[edited by: Latino2008 at 10:45 pm (utc) on Jan. 7, 2009]