Starting a new immigration news website

Business
1

Hei guys I am new to this forum and I great you all!
I have a small question. I would like to create a site related to immigration from Italy, my country of origin, to USA and backwards.
However, as a main content I will have news related to what is happening in the USA and in Italy, news gathered from several Italian and American online newspapers. The main language will be Italian and I hope to offer good info on what documents are needed to complete the various types of immigration, what to do when you are in USA and what not to do.

My questions are:

  • if I gather news bulletins and adapt them by translating and referring to all the original sources with a small description, will this be illegal? How can I have news if I do not own a news company, I find this very difficult to understand.
  • if I give suggestions on what are the procedures to be followed in USA, but after 2 months something changes and somebody goes in trouble by following an outdated solution given on my website, will that be a problem for me?

I have serious trouble understanding how can i generate content if the only working team is myself.

Your help is kindly appreciated,
Best regards

2

[FONT=verdana]Hi Zypa,

Welcome to the forum. I’ll do my best to answer your questions:

  • if I gather news bulletins and adapt them by translating and referring to all the original sources with a small description, will this be illegal?

It will be an infringement of copyright, and the new sources will be entitled to take legal action against you. This is true regardless of whether the copy is in the original language or is a translation. Adding a reference to the source doesn’t change that.

How can I have news if I do not own a news company, I find this very difficult to understand.

News agencies generally license their content to small publishers and website operators, for a fee. In fact, that’s what they’re in business for. You can legally re-publish their content, provided you pay the agreed fee.

There are a couple of other approaches you could consider:

  • Do your own research for a particular news story, by reading about it in several different places (preferably in both English and Italian), then write up your own version entirely in your own words. Where the original story contains information based on someone else’s research (for example, a survey they have conducted), you can quote that information, provided you cite the source correctly, (For example: 60% of immigrants never cook Italian food, according to a survey by XX.)
  • if I give suggestions on what are the procedures to be followed in USA, but after 2 months something changes and somebody goes in trouble by following an outdated solution given on my website, will that be a problem for me?

In theory, yes. You are holding yourself up as an expert in a particular field. If someone suffers a loss because of your bad advice, they might be able to take legal action against you. But they would have to be able to show that you did not exercise sufficient care in giving the advice.

For example, if you carefully researched the law on student visas, and published the results of your research, and then the law changed without any warning or notice (highly unlikely, but this is just an example), and if someone acted on your advice within an hour of the change taking effect, you could probably argue that you took sufficient care in giving the advice and couldn’t be blamed for what happened. But if you never get round to updating your site with the new information, and someone suffers a loss by acting on it many months later, you would be in a much worse position.

The usual approach would be to post a very clear disclaimer on every page of your site, to the effect that you believe the information to be correct but cannot guarantee that it is, and the reader should satisfy himself as to the accuracy of the advice before placing any reliance on it.

I hope this won’t discourage you. Keep in mind that many thousands of website operators successfully give legal and technical advice every day without being sued. You’ve just got to be very careful that you do it right.

Mike
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3

Hey there, I thank you for your replies, very helpful.

I am already ahead with the website, building it offline on a custom word
press installation. As I have treated all the subjects that are not posts but
individual unique pages, now I am left with the subjects with what the website
will be updated on a daily/weekly basis.

I have another puzzling question:
One main category of posts will be made from successful businesses that
people should follow and learn from. Let us take example McDonalds. I will then
evaluate the cons and pros of starting a company, etc.

Each post must be accompanied by a leading image related to the post that
will make readers quickly understand the information. Example: "McDonalds

  • how to have your own restaurant – image with McDonalds logo or a McDonalds
    restaurant". How can I legally have an image with McDonalds, in this
    example, if any image is copyright. Of course I could take some pictures
    from stock websites, showing food products or something similar, but this would
    misguide my readers. How can I get the “fair use” of copyright logos?
    I want to make everything legal and correct.

I thank you and have a great day!

4

[FONT=verdana]It is not illegal to publish other companies’ logos. For example, if you took a picture yourself of your local Macdonalds. and that picture included the Macdonalds sign, which is itself the logo, you would be free to publish the picture.

There are two things you must not do:

  1. Copy the logo from the company’s website (or any other source), and publish it on your own site - unless you have the company’s permission.

  2. Use the logo to make people think that your site is an official site of the company, or that you are affiliated with the company in some way. This is known as “passing off”, and would leave you open to legal action.

There are several solutions open to you:

  1. Take the photo yourself. It doesn’t have to actually contain the logo in order to make your point. For example, if the company was United Airlines, a photo of a plane taking off might serve the purpose, even if the logo wasn’t visible.

  2. Use a stock photo from a site that offers free photos (usually in return for a link).

  3. Use a photo from Wikimedia; these usually come with a licence that lets you reproduce the photos without the specific permission of the photographer (but you should in any case acknowledge the photographer - assuming you can find his name).

I hope this helps.

Mike
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5

Dear Mikl,
You are really a mentor for this website and I really thank you for your fast reply,
Let me comment to your arguments:

1.1 I have read on Wikipedia about the fair use of logo’s. For example, if I talk about CNN and have a small logo of CNN where people click on the logo and it will take them on the CNN main page I believe it is not infringement of copyright but good use of the “fair use” right. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use
2.1. You are correct there, I could take pictures myself, but then this would not be applicable to many companies that have no branches in my country but only in some. How do I write about, example : “Kkki japan” if that company has only a branch in Tokyo…I hope you understand.
To bypass this issue I tried to anticipate and write to the company, asking for permission to take one picture from their website and detail their activities. This means I do for them free advertising, making people know what they do and it is also in their interest of course. But no one replied so far, and I don’t wonder as I am not a company, but only a person with no budget…

  1. Wikimedia is my only friend so far.

Thank you again and have a great night!

6

Its no problem to post News articles on your site if you specify the source, It would be even better to ask permission for that. And wont be any problem if your info is outdated, because you will stipulate in your TOS that you cant be held responsable if the info isnt updated on time, so you`ll be covered :slight_smile:

7

[FONT=verdana]

Sorry, Webcosmo, but neither point is accurate.

Just because you acknlowledge the source, that does not in itself give you the right to re-publish copyright material. The only way you can legally do that is to get permission from the rights owner.

And putting a disclaimer in a ToS or similar page does not in itself absolve you of responsibility for negligence. It would be easy for an injured party to claim that they were not aware of the ToS, or that they had no reason to read it. Any disclaimer has to be prominent and easily visible.

Mike

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8

Hello there, it is still me with another question. I am curently writing great content for the website, but with no success in pageviews (so far)

I have a question: if I write about an artist and have an embedded video to youtube, is this illegal? I do not own the song, nor I do not think it was legally put there, although it has more than 1mil views. Is illegal to feature songs on my website?
Thanks again and have a nice evening all,
Best

9

[FONT=verdana]If the video is someone else’s copyright (which it probably is), then it is illegal to use on your site without the copyright holder’s permission. The fact that the video might have been placed on YouTube illegally doesn’t change that.

Many people post videos on YouTube in the expectation that they will be embedded in other sites. Many even welcome that. But if they haven’t given some sort of blanket permission or licence for their work to be used in that way, it’s safer to ask for their permission.

Mike
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10

Mikl, good point, I will read some more about this things.

How about point 2: If I add a job hunting table for immigrants to help them bypass all the third party companies like : umana, obiettivolavoro etc that operate in the country. Take as example I add a table with the following columns: " region/city/company name/small detail of company/embedded email “apply here” that allows my readers to send an email directly to the company (example jobs@company.com). That would help my readers find better jobs in the country they immigrate without depending on job companies that will take a part of their salaries.
Will this be illegal to post embedded (protected) email accounts on my webpage? Is illegal to list 100 companies on my website?

Thanks again for your support.

11

[FONT=verdana]Hmm. I’m not sure about your second point, Zypa. It sound to me that what you’re proposing is a “compilation”. That is, you are gathering information from multiple sources and presenting it as a complete work. If that’s right, then not only is it legal, but you would own the copyrigt of the compiled information and could prevent others from copying it.

So, from the copyright point of view, I would think you would have no problem. But I’m not completely sure about that. It would depend in part on how much of the job description or company details you copied from the original sources, and how much you wrote yourself.

Copyright apart, you might possibly get complaints for publishing companies’ email addresses, although it wouldn’t be illegal to do that. And you could argue that, if the company had itself already published the address, they can’t claim any kind of confidentiality for it.

Mike

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12

Dear Mikl, yes exactly, see the photo in attached. I will do all the hard work of finding in the yellow pages all the working companies by region. This would greatly help people bypass all the annoying recruiting companies and they will be able to apply to jobs directly to the company. This would have helped me a lot when I moved from Italy…
This is&will be a very time consuming job from my part, but I want to know if doing this is illegal.

Thank you again for your continuously support,
Best regards

13

[FONT=verdana]Zypa,

Based on your screen shots, I can’t see how this could be illegal from a copyright point of view. You are not copying any material that might be considered subject to copyright.

Regarding the posting of “embedded” email addresses, I’m not sure what you mean by “embedded”. If you are picking up the addresses from the companies’ own sites, that’s unlikely to be a problem. But perhaps you could explain what an “embedded email address” is.

I note that you are not publishing any information about what jobs the companies have available, or what kind of companies they are. I wonder how useful it would be for a job-hunter to simply send a CV to a company without knowing exacty what jobs they are applying for.

Mike[/FONT]

14

I believe you have already got very convincing and logical answers of your queries. But i guess if you take professional help of a web designing company their copyrights can provide you better guidance and help you create a strong and appealing website without violating any terms and conditions. Remember your website represents the goals of your organization and it is the fastest way to reach more clients.

15

Thanks everyone. The OP hasn’t returned in several months so I’m sure they have received the answer and moverd on by now

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