keyword spy

[sjhwebdesign]

My site stats show that keyw ordspy.com has accessed my website, on review they have cached images of my site plus keywords/phrases etc..

 

To be honest its quite easy to look at what keywords are being used on a website and that doesn't really bother me, it's the fact that they have the cheek to lift content from websites and sell the information to other people.

 

I have therefore emailed them to complain that it is an infringement of privacy and copyright and told them to remove their cache and data asap.

 

Is it actually legal to lift data from a website and sell it to someone else?

[LSW]

I would not really consider Keywords as lifting content. They are likely desperate as their business deals in keywords which are of little real value anymore... and that for a few years. Search Engines no longer give keywords and weight.

[sjhwebdesign]

I'm really more bothered that they are making money out of my website. if someone had a look at the meta tags and used them it wouldn't bother me, its the fact that they are selling other peoples stuff.

[administrator]

Is it actually legal to lift data from a website and sell it to someone else?

 

This comes back to basic copyright infringement. You would have to look this up or contact lawyer about this. That said, they cannot just copy your content and rebrand it. But they can use it as the basis of their own content by changing up the sentences, images and still deliver the same basic material and structure.

 

These types of legal battles can be costly. My advice would be to contact their hosting company with a complaint of plagiarism and many times, the hosting company will look into it not wanting any headaches.

 

... I should point out that (if memory serves me,) that hosting companies cannot be held responsible for their clients content.

 

Stefan

[sjhwebdesign]

basically from looking at their site i can see that they visit lots of sites and cache them similar to google in terms of a cache of the page, list of keywords found in the page, but they also have info on paid keywords used.

 

As a free member you can see 5 keywords used by "your competitors" but for ?x/month you can see the whole lot.

 

I just thing it's wrong that they sell the information.

 

I've basically emailed them to tell them to delete any records of my site and keep their nose out, if anyone wants to analyse the keywords/content etc they are free to do so but to go selling it is a different matter.

[LSW]

I would doubt copyright infrindgement would count here as you can not copyright words and that is what these are. They do not make up ideas you could claim your own, just words that more or less describe a site.

[sjhwebdesign]

I would doubt copyright infrindgement would count here as you can not copyright words and that is what these are. They do not make up ideas you could claim your own, just words that more or less describe a site.

 

i'm with on saying keywords just describe the content of the site and are free to use by all, my point is that they sell statistical information about peoples websites to other people.

 

if they allowed you to monitor your own site for a fee if you so wished, or gave you advice on what to use for your site that would be fine.

[LSW]

I know, I was speaking more towards Stef's reply. Unethical behavior is rampant on the web, we have to take it back from them.