Is it legal to download a whole website?

[pcslookout]

I know I know you going to ask why. Well if it ever goes down or disappears because of money problems.

 

[lxskllr]

Of course. They may have a private policy against it, and copyright laws apply for redistribution, but it otherwise isn't an issue.

 

[DigDog]

nope, it's not. you are not allowed to store media that has copyright, whether for personal use, redistribution, or storage.

If me, as a media owner, choose to show it to you, i in no way grant you the right to any of the above.

However, it's about as illegal as copying some words off' a blog. Who's gonna complain, when there is no loss caused? And generally people like to havetheir work appreciated, so if you say to someone "your website is really cool, can i make a mirror?" they will prob say yes.

If you ask the same to, say, Hardware Canucks, they'll probably say no.

in theory and in practice can be very different in the real world, and it also matters how litigious the owner is.

photocopying a newpaper is, in theory, illegal. Or rather, it could lead to a lawsuit. "Illegal" means the police will show up to arrest you.
During the VHS debate, several judges rules that "essentially the damage was inexistent" when people videotaped tv shows, which is, strictly speaking, not permitted by copyright law.

 

[JackTheBear]

The WayBack Machine does it to pretty much the whole internet regularly. You can view historic copies of pages from most websites pretty much every time the pages change. The copies of some sites don't exactly work right, but the content is there.
http://archive.org/web/

 

[mikeymikec]

During the VHS debate, several judges rules that "essentially the damage was inexistent" when people videotaped tv shows, which is, strictly speaking, not permitted by copyright law.

In the UK, IIRC the winning argument for VHS recorders was that they could be used for non-copyrighted content such as sporting events and therefore could not be banned from sale.

 

[TheELF]

nope, it's not. you are not allowed to store media that has copyright, whether for personal use, redistribution, or storage.

But that's how the internet works!
Anything you see you already have duplicated on your hdd.

 

[DigDog]

But that's how the internet works!
Anything you see you already have duplicated on your hdd.

ah, that is in fact true, but The Law does not understand that.

personally, i think copyright law should be revised by a collaboration of everyone with experience, and then the new law and everyone who worked on it should
be
burned

and that would solve copyright forever. but that's none of my business.

 

[Tirthankar Bose]

I don't think it is an issues unless you redistribute it