Wget

[sprks79]

I am fairly new to linux and would like to know the legality of the wget command. i would like to download a site as a template. changing all of the info but keeping the structure. is the downloading of a site with no malicious intent legal?

thanks in advance.

[daark.child]

I think your question is to do with copyright and legal issues rather that wget. Some websites are copyrighted, so if you are found to be using their images, content, template etc without the owners consent, you could be done for copyright infringement depending on the laws of your country.

[i92guboj]

Copyrighted material can't be used without permissions, that's not wget's problem.

However, downloading it is not ilegal, since, in first place, to view a site implies that you are downloading it, in one or another way. There's no magical way you can view a site without downloading it's contents. That'd be the informatic version of telepathy.

[MikJP]

I think your question is to do with copyright and legal issues rather that wget. Some websites are copyrighted, so if you are found to be using their images, content, template etc without the owners consent, you could be done for copyright infringement depending on the laws of your country.

According to the legislation in some countries (e.g. Finland), all website designs are copyrighted, even if you cannot find an explicit (c) there. So it all depends on your local legislation.

Don't assume, that we all live in the same country...

mikko

[daark.child]

According to the legislation in some countries (e.g. Finland), all website designs are copyrighted, even if you cannot find an explicit (c) there. So it all depends on your local legislation.

Don't assume, that we all live in the same country...

mikko

I'm not sure if the last line was part of the response to my post. If it was, then I'd like to clarify that I wasn't making any assumptions that everyone lives in the same country. This is why I specifically mentioned that the consequences of copying designs and content depend on the country where an individual is located. Also note that just because something is copyrighted somewhere it does not mean that the copyright is valid in all countries.

[bigtomrodney]

There's also the matter that trawling a website for offline browsing is often considered bad form and against the terms and conditions of usage in some cases.

There used to be a lot of website mirroring tools but I think these are less useful now with the dynamic content that we see these days.

[i92guboj]

According to the legislation in some countries (e.g. Finland), all website designs are copyrighted, even if you cannot find an explicit (c) there. So it all depends on your local legislation.

Don't assume, that we all live in the same country...

mikko

I don't think anyone assumed such a thing. I don't live in the USA either, if that's what you mean :P

However, as I said on my other post, downloading a site could hardly be considered illegal, since that's what the browser does when you write the url and press enter. That the client is called wget instead of IE or mozilla-firefox is not something that could be sustained on a tribunal, I guess.

As the other person above said, it's not the fact of downloading it, it's HOW you use that contents afterwards. In that respect, yes, check the legality in your country (and the country where it's hosted the site, since international relationships sometimes define agreements to handle www issues).

That being said, I am not a lawyer, so maybe there's something I am not considering...

Cheers and have a nice sunday