| You can believe to any degree you like, but there would be no concern about "fair use" in the copyright law lexicon if it only took "proper attribution" to re-purpose others' content for commercial or non-commercial use. The content of the school's site is quite likely copyrighted and they can control the form and location of copies of their content/data. Try this... Play an artist's song, in its entirety, on a radio station. Tell the audience where that song came from. Play another song... attribute. Never pay ASCAP license fees... see how long you are on the air. Or... copy/paste the entirety of a newly released book to your tumblr. Attribute accordingly. No worries, right? The original creator has copyright. They license or transfer it, frequently contractually, to publishers who control the rights to how copies of the material may be created and distributed. There are fair uses for portions and/or derivatives of content, but this use would not fall into those categories. Let's not forget that the kid sought and was denied permission for his app. He just assumed that silence in his time window implied permission. That's not nearly long enough for copyright to expire. Also, they could feasibly be dicks and say that his viewstate parser was a copyright circumvention technique putting him in the crosshairs of DMCA 1201 - Circumvension of Copyright Measures. So, you are plainly and simply rejecting a lot of readily available information on well-understood restrictions around copying other peoples' content. Maybe you are confused with Creative Commons licensing or something? |
The OP did not subvert anyone's revenue model.
Simply aggregating data is not violating any copyright laws nor protections. If so... most news sites would be in serious trouble. The OP was simply aggregating data into an easily accessible format for students.
The original creator retains copyright, but they can't prevent someone from linking to nor providing access to publicly accessibly information. If they truly want nobody to have access in this manor, they would have to block public access or restrict it in some form.
To use your book example. If the copyright holder of a new book posted the text in full on their website with no restrictions or payment necessary, and I reposted that text, provided attribution and a method to access the original content, then I would not be in violation of any law.