Consumers Digest

can I copy website product reviews?

I am currently creating an ecommerce website, is it possible to use product reviews and descriptions from another website eg the owners of the products for which i am selling, or is this against copyright laws. I have noticed other websites using the same product reviews but am unsure of what I can and can't do. Please someone help. Thanks :)

Public Comments

1. OK, lets think about this for a bit .. let's say you spend a few thousand $$$ and a few hundred hours generating content for your web site and I come along and copy / paste your web content into my site .. == is that OK with you ??? If 'yes', then please publish your web address and, if it's any good, I'll be happy to STEAL your content .. Any Review that appears on multiple sites has been paid for .. if you want to copy the material, find out who the original 'author' is (most likley a conmpnay that specializes in reviews) and pay them .. If you copy without permission you will get a Lawyers letter asking you to remove it and demanding compensation .. What you CAN do is 'link' to the other sites content .. however other site owners are often annoyed with this and make it difficult (for example by moving material around a lot or generating pages 'on the fly' so your 'links' rapidly become out-of-date)