General Question - Legal Advice

If I were to search almost all the major job sites in the UK for all the jobs available in a certain area, then copy all the results into a database and list the jobs on one of my sites, clearly stating which job site it was taken from including a link back to that job site, would that be illegal?

And would it make any difference if it wasn't me who was searching these job sites, but instead a fancy ASP script was searching the sites and entering the jobs into a database instead?

The way I look at it is, the people who pay to post these jobs won't mind, because I will be advertising their jobs for free. And the job sites shouldn't care because their not selling the job information, its available for public viewing. And I would only be listing the job summary, not the full job description. Meaning that if someone was interested in the job, they would have to click the link back to the job site to get the company contact details or apply online. At the end of the day I'm just compiling a list of links for available jobs in a specific area. The only reason I can think of that jobs sites might not be happy with this is because by putting their jobs on my site, I'm basically saying to people "look, you can either spend hundreds of pounds advertising your job on these big job sites along with jobs from all over the country, in which case your job will probably be listed on this site for free, or you can put them directly on this site which is aimed at the area of the country where interest in your job is most likely to come from for a fraction of the price!". But that’s just business I guess!

My real concern is the ASP 'crawler', would I be breaking any laws by using it to crawl sites for new jobs and checking if jobs have expired etc...?

Also, if anyone can see any other legal flaws in my idea I would be very grateful if you would point them out.


Thanks

The fact that you're asking probably means that there is some legally binding issues. However, Google gets by with crawling all of the time. What I would do, is send an anonymous email to the job listing site, and ask them. If they say you can't do it, then there probably is some legal issue to deal with (maybe have to credit the source, or whatever)

In terms of legality, your main concern would be with breaching copyright of the websites concerned, for which they could take you to court, slap an injunction on you (preventing you from using information from their site) etc. The usual course of action for this would start with them writing a letter to your registered office/advertised office asking you to refrain from using information on their site. I'm unsure of the legality of breaching copyright in terms of a criminal offence. Look at P2P end users that shared files and I believe were arrested by authorities; I suspect the first course of action in your case would be a letter from the respective websites.

Depending on how many sites you're looking at trawling, I'd take a look at their terms & conditions, legal disclaimers etc. and check what they say. They would almost certainly say that images/content etc. may not be used without their consent. Monster's, for example

If you wrote to these companies and asked for consent to use/trawl the info, I guess they'd probably decline, because:-
a) they would want to know what's in it for you and why would you be doing it for nothing. ie there's no such thing as a free lunch
b) they probably wouldn't believe that you'd just provide a link back to their own site and you'd actually be "stealing" the positions they have advertised.
c) they wouldn't want to spend the time sorting out the legals that go with providing consent, checking that you're keeping your end of the bargain etc.

There's nothing wrong with asking for our opinions, and I don't disagree with anything that has been said above, but I strongly advise you to seek legal advise from a solicitor (I believe that's the term, in the UK?) before taking any action. Legal opinions can be quite complex (that's why there are lawsuits!), especially in the area of intellectual property. Don't rely on the opinions of anyone who isn't licensed to practice law, when it comes to conducting your business!