Using a website content

No. One cannot use the contents freely available on a website to give information to the public at large without the permission by the owner of website. The free availibility is only for personal use of the person using the website. For publishing the same, one has to get permission. Otherwise it amounts to infringement.

I do agree with my friend Suchitra. Freely available do not mean free to infringe the copyright. The website content are copyrightable like any literary works from the time they are posted on the website and you cannot reproduce it, copy it, download it without the permission of the owner. Your unauthorised use may violate the copyright. 

Thanks,

But things like score of a football match. Is this thing also copywrightable? I agree about the content being the property of the website owner but reading scores it and then restating it, is it not legal?

These things are publicly available on web sites across the internet, on radio, TVs, NEWS, do they all get permission from the ones organising the match?

Please give it a thought. Thank you.

Dwij

I FEEL THE SAME DOES NOT AMOUNTS TO VIOLATION OF COPYRIGHT AS THE SAME AMOUNTS TO CURRENT EVENT AND AMENABLE TO BE INTERPRETED UNDER S.52 OF INDIAN COPYRIGHT ACT, 1957 WHICH LIST OUT CERTAIN EXCEPTIONS WHERE IN aCTS DOES NOT AMOUNTS TO VIOLATION OF COPYRIGHT.  FIND THE RELAVANT SECTION AS UNDER:-

52.Certain acts not to infringement of:- (1) The following acts shall not constitute an infringement of copyright, namely : ---

(b) a fair dealing with a literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work for the purpose of reporting current events ---

( i ) in a newspaper, magazine or similar periodical, or

( ii ) by radio-diffusion or in a cinematograph film or by means of photographs;

ITS A MATTER OF PROPER INTERPRETATION THATS THE REASON, WHY MANY WEBSITES, TV ETC SHOW CONCURRENTLY

NO BODY CAN HAVE COPYRIGHT OVER CURRENT EVENTS, ONLY THING IS ONE CAN HAVE COPYRIGHT OVER THE UNIQUE MANNER IN WHICH YOU HAVE PUBLISHED AS AN ARTICLE, USING ONE'S SWEAT OF MIND.

Sir, I do agree with concurrent transmissions which cannot be protected under copyright. But Dwij is asking about copying the info from a free website and then giving updates on mobile sets. It is not concurrent broadcasting. He can do so by other means to know the football scores like hearing it in a radio or by watching TV.. But he is particularly asking about taking scores from a website because it is easy for him to transmit the same to mobile sets. I May be wrong in interpretation. Pl enlighten me if I am wrong. I dont think free information available on website can be used to make profit by anybody. Where is sweat of mind in this case? :)

Actually I am not using any one particular website, there are many that I surf and then provide the data.

For the football event, I can get the data from any website, that is freely providing this, that does not have any right over the content either as it is a current event so why can't I sell it?

My users are free not to purchase my application if they feel like.

-Dwij

Also, the content is taken and then re-entered in my own way for the application to read properly, so i am not at all using anything unique to them that website is hosting the content.

@ Raghavendra Sir,

Pl let me know why one has to refer to different sites just to report football scores updates? Is it not enough that the person use a site in which info is freely available? It is just a proceess of applying a software to convert the info and deliver to mobile sets.  I dont see any need of application of mind to give footall score updates.

I think I can asnwer why I need to look at different websites just to get a football score.

The thing is that my mobile application is not only giving a data for one off sport like football. It is looking at all sorts of sports like cricket, hockey, basketball and ofcourse no site give everything at one place.

About the sweat of mind, we need to consolidate the data in the required format before a mobile would be able to understand it.

Also, the mobile users are not directly going to their website thereby loading it heavily, instead they come to our servers and load them.

We fill the data on servers by looking at the scores on the website.

As per the discussions we have had so far, I guess I am not doing anything illegal. Please correct me.

Thanks alot.

-Dwij

Yes. Now I think you are not infringing copyright.  It would be better if you could give details more clear at the first instance. Anyway, it was enlightening discussion for me too. I will look forward for other's opinion too.