Reading Response 5/3- Mashups and Their Consequences

Mashups are posing a potential threat to online copyright laws, due to the fact that these applications are still in their developmental stages. There are still discrepancies as to whether the API’s behind these applications are impeding on the rights and privacy of web sites through their use of screen scraping. In doing so, content is taken from various websites to be provided for mashups that were originally intended for consumption purposes only. However, although this practice can be viewed as unethical, especially when certain websites are not aware of what’s happening, there is still the argument that that mashup applications fall under ethical terms. Because of the internet’s standpoint on the “free flow and use of information” it is believed that the extraction and appropriation of public content does not go against any regulations. Personally, I believe that anything taken and used without one’s knowledge is wrong, so I absolutely see how mashups can be an infringement on privacy and copyright online.