Someone else's content and RSS

Is it legal

[aleksl]

A site, besides their own content, publishes articles from other sources - with the permission or by paying a fee. Will it be legal to aggregate that content into an RSS feed?

[BigDave]

That all depends on the wording of whatever license or contract they use when aquiring the content.

It is a form of distribution, and the copyright holder retains control over distributions of their work. If the contract allows such distribution, then it is legal. If it does not, have some wording that allows it, then it is infringement.

[aleksl]

It doesn't seem to be a "distribution of content", but rather a distribution of headlines which according to one previous thread here are not copyrightable? Content itself stays on the webside that licensed it.

[woop01]

Have you tried asking? Almost everyone I've contacted regarding that type of thing has been more than happy to provide headlines in exchange for the traffic resulting from the clicks. Of course, that the idea behind RSS any way.

[aleksl]

that's one of our websites, question is whether we are allowed to distribute headlines of the licensed news in RSS feed to other sites

[BigDave]

Even if the headlines are not covered by copyright, you should definitely check out the contracts or license anyway.

The license is what allows you to distribute the work, including the copyrighted portion.

While you may not be violating copyright by distributing that headline, you could still be violating the terms of the license.

If you violate the terms of the license, you lose the right to distribut the body of the work through the normal channels.

If you continue to distribute the copyrighted portion of the work after you violate the terms of the license, you are infringing on the copyright.

That is right, you might have less ability to distribute that headline than someone that has not entered into any sort of agreement with the rights holder.

Sound complicated enough? If that isn't, I can also mention that it will likely be viewed differently depending on which circuit you live in.

But if there is nothing in the license that says that you cannot send out the headlines, and that is all that you send out on the feed, then you are likely safe.

But if you are running a business based on publishing other people's work, you really should have a lawyer to tell you what you can, cannot, should and shouldn't do.