Copyright Infringement?

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What are the legal ramifications of aggregating / scraping a third party onto a business listing site?

If a pizza shop shares photos of their business (and their pizza) on Facebook, Google+ and other large platforms. What are the legal ramifications of aggregating all of these photos onto a ‘master’ platform (external website).

Is this legal? (Attribution will be given).

Does anyone have experience (specifically the terms of Facebook and G+?)

Elizabeth Potts Weinstein, Small Business Attorney & Entrepreneur, answered:

(I’m an intellectual property law attorney.) If you use the embedding features of Twitter/Facebook/G+, you can embed a post on an external website and it is probably within the terms of the original license the user gave to the social media site. However, if you download the photos from a social media site and then post them on your own website, that’s copyright infringement. Attribution isn’t enough to get around the fact that you don’t have a license to use the photos.

About Elizabeth Potts Weinstein
Small business attorney, helping you create a *real* business from your big ideas. Entrepreneur. Mom. Writer. Explorer of the wilderness. Host of This Week in SmallBizLaw. INFJ. Because law can be used for good. I usually take Clarity calls on Wednesdays and Fridays.

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