Same content!

[nitin24dec]

Hi,
I have seen a site which is using content from some famous big site. I can see that a lot many sites are using that content. I think this is because that the original content is from some government site. I am making a site on australia and would like to use the same content for "australia". Can somebody advice that who is the original owner of this content and do i need to take the permission from them.

[edited by: engine at 10:20 am (utc) on July 1, 2004]
[edit reason] TOS [/edit]

[EileenC]

If you are seeing this same content all over the place, there's a good chance it's in the public domain. (I'm talking from a USA point of view; I don't know about internationally.) The first place I would start would be to google unique key phrases from that content and see if it leads me back to a government site. Some government sites will say right on it that it's in the public domain. If not, though, you could try to contact the publishing agency or whomever and see if it is, in fact, in the public domain.

[nitin24dec]

Hi EileenC,

Thanks for the interesting thing you told and I just spent almost 3 hours on research as I found this pretty interesting to study rules etc..

One small this I want to discuss ..On a cancer site It says "Most of the information on the National Cancer Institute's (NCI's) Web site has been written by federal government employees. This material is in the public domain and is not subject to copyright restrictions. Therefore, no special permission is required to use it or reproduce it. However, any reproduced material should contain proper acknowledgement of NCI as the originator and the NCI Web site, www.cancer.gov, as the source.

---

"Artwork, graphics, and text developed for NCI by private-sector designers, photographers, and writers under contract to the federal government may be owned by the originators"

" But when i go to cancer.gov , it says "All content and works posted on this website are owned and
copyrighted by the American Cancer Society, Inc. All rights reserved."

Can experts here advice that can this be used freely on my website?
Thanks for the help ...

[nitin24dec]

Hi,

Any views please?

Thnx

[Labyrinth]

>>Can experts here advice that can this be used freely on my website?

You are asking the wrong people. You must ask the orignators/owners of the works -- they are the only ones that can put the work in public domain or give you permission to use it.

[Larryhat]

Oh heck. If you are referring to the CIA site, even evangelical sites copy that. If you want accurate counts of kangaroos say, it isn't going to happen until they do something wrong. Same goes for wallabies. I wouldn;t copy those sites until they get their numbers straight. My opinion only. - LH