CODEWITHSUNDEEP
web-applicationsweb-crawler
JPC
JPC

Reputation: 8296

Web aggregator/crawler for products

I'm curious about web aggregators/crawlers. I was thinking about how sites like google shopper/images or pricegrabber work. I imagine they basically crawl the internet and index a bunch of products from the sites that they visit. Do they face copyright issues? Is it illegal for these sites to be pulling pictures of content from other websites and presenting it on their site? Thanks

Upvotes: 2

Views: 684

Answers (1)

hakre
hakre

Reputation: 198124

I'm curious about web aggregators/crawlers. I was thinking about how sites like google shopper/images or pricegrabber work. I imagine they basically crawl the internet and index a bunch of products from the sites that they visit.

From what I know, some work exactly like that.

Some others pull the data in a normalized format from the shops directly. The shops pay the price-comparison sites to take their data.

Do they face copyright issues?

Sure, copyright applies to any type of work copyright applies to. For example copyrighted works are Texts, Software, Images, Music and Movies.

Next to copyright issues, I can imagine that this can have implications on Trade-Secrets, Patents and Database rights.

Is it illegal for these sites to be pulling pictures of content from other websites and presenting it on their site?

That depends if those sites are allowed either by law or by the holder of rights to perform the actions they perform in offering their service. That simple and non-saying it is. You might even need to fight in court for what you're doing to find finally out.

But especially for pictures I know that in some countries the usage is (or can be) very restricted. I've heard that manufactures (not the shops) have forbidden the price-comparison sites to make use of their (copyrighted) product pictures.

If you're really planing to build something like that, you should contact your legal department because I strongly assume that there are a lot of issues involved in building such a service. It's not 1999 any longer.

Upvotes: 1

Related Questions