I'm interested in building an online business directory for a specific industry, but would like to manually add businesses myself to get things started. Is there anything wrong adding info and links to a business without asking them first?
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I'm interested in building an online business directory for a specific industry, but would like to manually add businesses myself to get things started. Is there anything wrong adding info and links to a business without asking them first?
IMO, absolutely. I have had clients who, while I was building a website for them, start yelling at me for putting up a superpages.com video (or something) that they didn't want, was inaccurate, etc.
I didn't put it up, of course. superpages (or whoever) put it up without even mentioning it to the company. But it was not appreciated.
I have also seen scams like that - where a "demo" listing or website is put up for free, then they send a letter that says "if you like it, do nothing, we'll bill your phone bill." That letter is usually discarded as junk mail without being read. But, it was sent, it was written notice, and it was uncontested. So good luck getting any money back.
At the least, it's impolite not to ask permission. It's not your name, your company, etc., but you're trying to use it. At the worst, as you can see above, it's real shi++y. You already went to the trouble of collecting their info. It's not much harder to politely ask permission to post it.
If this is an impersonal website and only meant to list outside resources, then I actually don't see a problem.
Basically, if your website is like a small search engine in the industry (think of your site like google), then that should be fine.
Or, more directly, this is like a phone book: there's no reason a phone book must have permission from a business: it's a public entity and the information is already publicly available-- you'd just be organizing it.
Additionally, there's plenty of room in the law and in business for reviewing others.
However, if any of the reviews or information is negative, that might become a problem. One way to approach this is to only put positive information. For the bad companies, just put less good information, or neutral information.
If you intend to make money from this, that might also get complex. You can't have a website that has information about a copyrighted movie and make money on it, so I imagine that the same applies for patented products and registered names.
I agree with Traq, though: you should inform the companies of what you are doing. Honestly, I doubt they will care since your website will be small (at first) and they are probably big companies (I'm just guessing about this). But this way you will have told them.
The most honest thing you can do is inform them and add a "remove me" link to the entries. (You could have a way for them to prove their identities, such as an email address from their domain, so that only the company could remove its page.)
Another issue is copyright: you cannot steal information from their sites and put it on yours. You could write your own information, though. Also, make sure you have legitimate ways of obtaining information: you can't just copy it from another source.
Most of the time, legally and morally, you will always be ok if you ask permission and are willing to stop if you are asked to. There are of course exceptions here, but the worst that will happen in any situation similar to copyright is that you will receive an angry letter: if you react politely and quickly, following the request ("remove me from your site", or maybe just "change ___ on my information"), there is very little to worry about. In fact, the biggest thing to worry about is this type of letter. And sometimes you might receive them even if you are correct (legally, maybe morally).
well put.Quote:
Originally Posted by djr33
And though it's legal to use info from the public domain, companies will still be upset if it's misleading (even if technically accurate) or if it presents as being authored or authorized by the company - it's a p.r. issue.
I don't see why any company or business should react negatively if you are giving them free advertising by listing them in your directory - if anything, they should appreciate it. Plus, if the information you are adding is generally in the public domain anyway, such as contact address and business name etc, then it's not unreasonable to compile that information together. You might still get awkward businesses who don't appreciate it, but as a general rule, you don't and shouldn't have to ask permission for stuff like this when you are doing something that is actually in their favour.
Companies like to be in control of their own advertising and publicity. It's a pretty basic desire.Quote:
Originally Posted by Piraza