Republishing news and information. Copyright violation?

[careerskk]

Hi,

In my website, I thought of adding few sections on news and jobs (for local visitors).

However, the only sources of information I can think of are newspapers and other websites. For example if a company is posting few job openings in its careers page will it be fine if I publish the information on my website with a link to the company's site.

[ENetArch]

Career,

Always ask permission to republish their information. Yes's are great, no responses are yes's by default. But it's the NO's that will cry fowl if you act first and ask for pardons later.

ENetArch,

[mack]

no responses are yes's by default

I would not go that far. Only a Yes is a yes, no reply should always be taken as a no. Its about seeking permission.

When it comes to posing information you always need to take copyright into account. For example if company A is hiring and has placed an advert in a newspaper then the copy is under copyright. However, if you simple place on your site "company A is hiring, click here for more information" then this would be safer.

You can post information, but you can't use copy that is protected by copyright.

Mack.

[CosmicLee]

You can only republish a small portion of an article without permission, and only if you also site the source. You cannot republish a full article without permission.

[Syzygy]

Where job advertisements are concerned, nine times out of 10 you will find that recruiters have absolutely no qualms at all about their ads being picked up and reproduced by other sites.

This is particularly true for paid for adverts. The recruiter wants their jobs adverts to hit as big a target area as possible - after all, they want to find the best candidates for the vacant positions - and if you want to help them in their recruitment drive for free your generous efforts will be warmly welcomed.

Your biggest concern will be if the ad copy and/or design has been written or created in-house by a specific newspaper or site. You reproduce such an ad and then you will be using copyrighted material without permission.

Syzygy

[Syzygy]

Hang on. Looks like I've got the wrong end of the stick...

Ok, so you want to reproduce the news that companies place on their own websites.

Go for it. This is news material. Companies publish it because they want people to know about it. Most of the time such information will have been sent out as a press release anyway, so you should consider it as being squarely aimed at the public as news fodder. It is highly unlikely that reproducing such material directly will cause you even the slightest of problems.

By undertaking such a task you are aiding the companies in getting the exposure they seek about their announcements.

Carry on like this and you'll be half way to being a news source :-)

Lifting such stories straight from news sites, on the other hand, will land you in trouble. Don't do it!

Syzygy

[bizminder]

That's something that's done by most of the content companies. But the thing is there is a difference in posting the same content and modifying the content. The latter often works.

[msmousette]

I hope my experience might reasure you. For about 10 years I have run a small website with a discussion email list on Yahoo! on a voluntary basis to support members of my small profession in part of the UK. This started out solely to promote recruitment when it was a serious problem in this part of the country.

At first, professional managers sent me copies of the text that had been sent to the advertising agencies or they posted the information themselves to the email list. After a while, HR staff were contacting me directly with copy or were joining the email list to post messages about jobs.

It was suggested initially that I ought not to post images of paid-for job adverts from our professional bulletin because of copy write issues. However, the then president lived in the area and she queried it and cleared it for me.

There was also some concern initially that the professional body might lose advertising revenue if the jobs were posted first on my list or website, attracted suitable candidates and so never made it to the Bulletin. However, the employers were not going to risk advertising solely to such a limited target audience so the issue never arose in practice.

Good luck with your website :-)

[SeoKungFu]

I think, though not fully sure, RSS feed embedding on your site solves the problem, especially if it has the description - you have it in.