There have been quite a few content aggregation sites that have cropped up in the recent past – both in India and US. ixigo.com, Yahoo Farechase, zoomtra for travel, Yahoo Jobsearch, bixee etc for jobs, spoteazy for electronics and there are many others in US in this space. My question is: What are the legality issues w.r.t content aggregation? Can the host websites sue the content aggregator for using their content for “commercial purposes”?
For example: I build a car portal aggregator from carwale.com, carzoo.com, carsalesindia.com etc. When a user searches on my website, he/she is presented results from any of these websites (with a brief summary) and when he/she clicks the link, they are taken to the host website. My revenue stream is sponsored ads. Once I get sufficient traffic, I may also open up the site to take listings directly.
Can carwale.com etc sue me on the basis “I am using their information for commercial purposes” or “I am using copyrighted content” etc – and yes, its written in the terms and conditions of all the content websites that their content cannot be used for commercial use without their explicit approval.
Atleast with travel, jobs the main revenue stream for the host web sites is not ad based (they are getting paid for subscription or when a transaction takes place). So content aggregators may not be perceived as direct competitors. But for free listing providers such as directory services, car listings, yellow pages, real estate websites where their primary revenue stream is also ad-based, content aggregators can be perceived as direct competitors (even though they drive traffic to the host site).
Do you think the host websites would actively sue the content aggregators. btw, CAN they sue? What about the “fair use” clauses – can they protect the content aggregators (in India)?
First of all, is this a big issue? How are the current content aggregators (in India) dealing with this issue? And should start-ups be worried about this? And how should they deal with this?
I would appreciate if anyone can shed more light on this.
regards
Vamsi (http://vamsikv.wordpress.com)
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You can try to sign up a deal with these sites to provide you their content and actually pay you to send customers to their sites. This business model is practised by all price comparison shopping sites like shopping.com, pricegrabber and shopzilla. They acquire customers by paying search engines etc (sem) for traffic and then when the traffic gets directed to the end sites through them, they get paid by them for that. The content is usually provided to them on daily basis after they make a deal. They dont have to crawl the sites at all. In US you can also buy content from content aggregators like Linkshare, Performics or Commision Junction.
There is an interesting take on this by lancebot (which is a job vertical search engine). They have used the concept of fair use and non-commercial nature of their site as reasons for non-violation of copyright. For the complete explanation check http://www.lancebot.com/disclaimer.jsp. It is debatable if sites running on ad revenues can claim fair use as they are taking traffic away from the source sites. Most job sites also depend on home page banners and interstitials as a source of revenue.
I suppose startups can look for revenues through lead generation. I think shopping aggregators like ugenie use this as their model.
Hi Ashish, Yes I did ask one. Its a grey area – but yes the host websites can sue if they perceive the aggregators as competitors. That doesn’t mean that they will win, but it may effect the start-up in many other ways – in getting funding, customers etc. Thats what I more interested in and would like to some comments on.
why dont u ask a lawyer?
Hi Vamsi,
This is a very interesting topic to discuss here, and we would love to see opinions of fellow entrepreneurs, bloggers and the community.
We, at iXiGO, believe that pulling content from someone’s website without permission and/or reasonable attribution might not just be illegal but more than that, is an unethical practice. We have thus made sure that each of our content partners realize the value of sharing content with us, and if they dont and humbly request exclusion, we definitely remove them from the search till the time they see the value.
As far as cyber laws are concerned, this is a very murky and grey area in India, given that there is no history of litigation / rulings. History of litigation in the US reveals that mostly out of court settlements were forced owing to the difficulty and complexities in the cases.
However, I think the bigger question in this debate for all of us is “is content aggregation / comparison shopping in the best interest of the public?” and if it is, how can we ensure that this is considered “fair use” by all. One of the factors that will determine this is how much value can these merchants realize from the search and what assurances can they have for the aggregator not becoming a merchant some day.
Given that transparent price-comparison yields to a more efficient market and in general, it helps people like you and me optimize our spending and be more informed buyers, can it be considered in the “best interest” of the general public, and in-effect force online merchants / content owners to share content to such comparison engines that do not transact ? After all, decoupling the search from the transaction means that we never compete with the sellers in the classical sense.
Would be great to see more comments !!
Cheers,
Aloke
http://www.iXiGO.com