Forum Moderators: not2easy
Say Corporation XYZ was a DotCom company. They created a sensation in the 90's, invested millions of dollars into content and promotion, still have hundreds maybe thousands of active sites listing back, but the corporation XYZ has vanished, gone bankrupt, and there is absolutely nothing left from it except... in the WayBackMachine provided by Alexa.
Will it be legal to go back to this WayBackMachine by Alexa, extract the content from their servers, register the domain name again, and publish the site once again? Or, if it is your competition, grab all their content and use it on your website?
I've had this question for the longest time, since technically the content of the website was part of the assets of the corporation XYZ and they don't exist anymore.
You'll have to do a bit more detective work before doing what you propose. Even though the firm went bankrupt, their assets (including intellectual property rights) were probably purchased by someone else. It's possible other copyrights (e.g., authors of the content) could be involved, too.
Could you get away with it? Perhaps... but I'd try to find out what happened to the remnants of the firm. It's possible that you might even get permission to republish from the inheritor of the copyright by asking.
I originally tried to buy their company, but they were based in Argentina. After their country's economic meltdown they disappeared. I have been calling every single number that is associated with their company and they are all disconnected. Furthermore, now UltSearch registered their domain name, which renders all their branding efforts obsolete.
Aafter some investigation I found that Argentina doesn't recognize cyberspace in anything legal. It's just sad to see hundreds of very well crafted and valuable content be completely wasted.
