Legal Question in Intellectual Property in New York
I am starting a web host review site that will aggregate user reviews from various web host review sites, classify each review as either positive or negative and then
publish the total numbers. (A web host sells hosting services that allows you to publish a website to the world wide web)
Eg Web Host being reviewed: JustHost
Total positive reviews: 2256
Total negative reviews: 458
User Review Ratings from:
web Hosting Geeks (500+, 100-) Link to reviews here
top Ten Reviews (400, 50 ) Link to reviews here
TheTop10BestWebHosting.com(80, 10 ) Link to reviews here
http://www.webhostingbestdeal.com (90, 30) Link to reviews here
etc..
I would also like to publish the editor ratings (rank) that each site gave the host.
EG Editor Rankings for JustHost
web Hosting Geeks JustHost - rank 3
top Ten Reviews JustHost - rank 1
TheTop10BestWebHosting.com JustHost - rank 7
http://www.webhostingbestdeal.com JustHost - rank 10
Question: Am I allowed to publish a list of user review totals and editor rankings from various websites or is this a copyright violation?
2 Answers from Attorneys
There's nothing in the statistics that is an apparent copyright violation, but I'd want to see the actual use or proposed use before offering a final opinion.
Assuming the data you are aggregating is freely available, which then you would fall under the fair use doctrine, or you are licensed to handle such data in the manner you are proposing, then you are permitted to aggregate data. In fact, through such aggregation, you will be creating your own copyrighted materials.
As far as republishing (otherwise could be considered as reporting) editor rantings, again you would likely fall under the fair use doctrine. You should always give credit to the editor and be mindful that fair use has its limitation.
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