Legal Issues Arising from Web Mashups
As society has moved into the Internet Age, we are growing accustomed to having more and more data at our finger tips in more formats about more topics. Very simply, consumers are demanding a lot of content. In order to grab traffic and corresponding market share, entertainment and media companies are scrambling to try to meet the demand. As a means of competing commercially for surfers, traffic, and revenue, and in some measure, out of sheer creativity, “mashups” are now springing up all over the Internet.
To create mashups, a programmer typically uses an application programming interface or API from each Web service to call each source of content or data and then writes a program that combines the Web services into a new mashed together presentation or compilation.2 APIs can be proprietary, and in such instance their use requires payment of a fee and the signing a license agreement. Alternatively, APIs can be open, or available to anyone to use for free. Though some APIs may be free, they nevertheless may be subject to an owner’s specific license or terms and conditions of use or a GNU General Public License.3 In addition, the number of calls that the mashup may make to the provider or its Web service or database is usually limited if the API is free. Moreover, some of the terms and conditions of even free APIs are often quite restrictive.
Because mashups by definition involve the combination of someone else’s information or data into a new service or application, mashups can trigger a number of legal issues that should be considered, preferably before a significant amount of time is put into their design or implementation.
While the potential for new and exciting mashup applications is great, so are the legal issues that face mashup developers. The provision of mashed Web services is certainly a trend of the future, but the development of them is fraught with potential legal liabilities that require careful consideration. [Intellectual Property & Technology Law Journal, Volume 18, Number 8]
