Legal question about (text) content
 

First, yes I am aware I need to speak to an attorney regarding this, but trying to find the right direction in who to go to before I have to fork out money in legal fees.

My biz partner and I built a type of sports "search engine" from content (all text) that we bought from two different sources. The first source is all statistics, the second is descriptive text about events - about 3-5 sentences.

My concern is that with the descriptive text, the person who sold it to us may not have the rights to resell the content as he said he did (probably can't really hold someone from another country legally liable). Of course we are using the content on our site to drawl traffic and make money on the ad space and advertisements; i.e. commercial use

I've taken a few of the descriptions and looked them up on google and see word for word listed on a few other sites, and those sites are not owned by the same person/company (i looked it up on whois.net). I'm guessing this may have came from all the same source, but with my luck, I dont want a lawsuit slapped on my door from some company claiming to be the owner and suing us for copyright infringement or worse.

We are not charging people to view the content, they can see it all for free. I know this is almost the same as tube sites in our industry, but im looking to make sure everything is 100% legit. Displaying this content is NOT taking away revenue from charging to see the content like videos are to tube sites.

So any thoughts on this and what type of attorney, if any, should we talk to about this?

My only thought would be to make a clear link on the site saying the content is not our own and came from 3rd party sources.

add a user upload form. problem solved.

There is now, but you have to be from a credible source such as a newspaper, magazine, etc. not just any random jackass who wants to upload random stuff about penis enlargement pills and buying penny stocks

This is a somewhat complicated copyright issue. I doubt if you will get a clear answer on a forum basically because you havent told us enough facts. The issue of revenue v. free is not really that important to the analysis though. And that really is your opinion not that of the copyright owner.

My first thought is to make sure you are covered by the DMCA. You will need the proper notices, counter takedown notices and a policy for dealing with them. As well as registering with the US Copyright Office as an ISP under the safe harbor provisions.

Overall talk to an attorney that practices in intellectual property and specifically copyright law. We can help, but good luck finding someone. Not every town has a lawyer that understands internet law and copyright. Let me know if we can help.