Hi, my name is David Bischke and I'm the Creative Design Manager for a
new audio and video learning site called LearnOutLoud.com which is
going to link to many sites of audio and video learning products. 
We've currently been establishing many affiliates with these sites. 
Right now our two key affiliates are Audible.com and Amazon.com. 
Audible.com has provided us with their product descriptions so we're
pretty sure it's legal to use them on our site.  But we're not sure
what of Amazon.com's content we can use.  What we want is up to date
information on what content is legal to take from publishers and
retailers and put on your site, and what is illegal?  We want some
articles or books that explain Internet copyright law.  Here are some
questions we have:

We're affiliates of Amazon.com earning them money.  Can we legally
take their "Product Descriptions" and summaries with the heading
"Amazon.com"?

Can we take the non-customer generated reviews on Amazon.com such as
reviews from Publisher's Weekly, Audiofile, Booklist, etc.?  If not
how does one get clearance for these reviews?

We're linking to many products by major book publishers such as Simon
& Schuster Audio, Random House AudioBooks, Time Warner Audiobooks. 
Can we take the content from their sites?

Do affiliates generally have permission to the content on the sites
they are linking to or do they need written consent to grab
descriptions and data from the site they're linking to?

These are just some of our questions.  We're going to have a database
of 1000s of products hopefully with descriptions on every product page
and we're quite uninformed on the current legal matters regarding
these issues.  If you could check out our site www.learnoutloud.com,
you'll see what we're going for content wise.  Please answer with a
list of accessible resources on these matters.

Is this not addressed in the affiliate agreements you signed (online or on paper)?

Hi  David,

Nelson-ga makes an excellent point--you should closely review the
terms of the affiliate agreements to see what is stated regarding
permission to use content found at the linked site(s).  This is
critical because "Internet copyright law" is pretty much the same as
good old "pre-Internet copyright law" in virtually all respects
(except for the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which is not
applicable here), and pre-Internet copyright law says you need
permission to use content you did not author.  The link itself to
another site (assuming you are just linking to a portal page and not
deep linking into a site) is not problematic.  So no, you cannot grab
content from another site and post it on your site without permission
from the copyright owner.  Your status as an ?affiliate? does not
inherently or automatically change that analysis, i.e., copyright law
does not grant you an exception or permission merely by reason of your
status as an affiliate.  This is why I hope that those permissions are
granted in your affiliate agreement(s).  If not, contact the site you
are linking to and ask for permission to reproduce content from their
site on your site.  Since you are an affiliate, they should not have
any problems with your request, as long as you are not wishing to
reproduce their site in whole.  If they deny your request, your
recourse would be to write your own product descriptions.

In terms of resources to which I can refer you, there is a ton of
stuff out there on copyright law basics, but I am aware of no specific
resources on affiliate programs.

There are some more esoteric concepts we can discuss if you want, like
fair use and the idea/expression merger doctrine, but I think the best
course for now, assuming your affiliate agreements are silent, is to
simply ask for permission.

Hi again,

I just realized that you may not have affiliate agreements with all
the sites from which you want to take content.  Same analysis--ask for
permission.  But you should also carefully review the site from which
you want to take content--there may be a license to use content for
that exact purpose found in their, e.g., "Legal," pages.  I have seen
some sites that have a blurb like, "Content on this site may be
reproduced for the limited purpose of describing content to be found
at this site through a referring link," or something like that . . .

Okay ipfan-ga, this makes sense.  Review the terms of the affiliate
agreements.  Now for the sites we're linking to without affiliate
programs, do we need written agreements or if I just send them an
e-mail asking for permission to reproduce content and they reply yes
is that enough to cover ourselves legally.  Also we're currently
linking to Audible.com and they provided us with all their product
descriptions.  Now they are actual retailers of these products and at
the bottom of all the descriptions on their site is something like:

©2004 Ron Chernow; (P)2004 Penguin Audio

These don't seem to refer to the description but rather to the author
of the book and the publisher.  They didn't include this in the
descriptions they gave us, so this isn't something that we'd need to
include on our site, is it?

Hi David,

One at a time:
1. "Now for the sites we're linking to without affiliate
programs, do we need written agreements or if I just send them an
e-mail asking for permission to reproduce content and they reply yes
is that enough to cover ourselves legally[?]"  An e-mail is fine, but
make sure you specifically delineate what content of theirs you are
going to reproduce on your site and make sure you keep a hard copy of
all permission e-mails.

2. "Also we're currently linking to Audible.com and they provided us
with all their product descriptions.  Now they are actual retailers of
these products and at the bottom of all the descriptions on their site
is something like:

©2004 Ron Chernow; (P)2004 Penguin Audio

These don't seem to refer to the description but rather to the author
of the book and the publisher.  They didn't include this in the
descriptions they gave us, so this isn't something that we'd need to
include on our site, is it?"  No.  By giving you the product
descriptions they also gave you implicit permission to reproduce the
product descriptions, assuming they knew what you were going to do
with them.  You do not need to reproduce the copyright notice (©2004
Ron Chernow; (P)2004 Penguin Audio), unless your affiliate agreement
with Audible.com requires it.  You might also just read all the fine
print legal stuff at audible.com to make sure they do not impose any
use restrictions or notice requirements in the terms of use that
govern their web site.  Everybody's web site has terms of use in the
legal section.

ipfan-ga:

Let me just address one more point related to affiliate legality and
I'll give you the answer.  We're planning on posting our reviews to
Amazon, Audible.com, and some of our other affiliate sites and we're
wondering how far you can go in terms of posting reviews to more or
less get people to visit your site.  Is just putting
"LearnOutLoud.com, Your Audio and Video Learning Resource" as a
signature all we can do?  Or can we go as far as putting a link to one
of our product pages?  I'm assuming this legal information is listed
somewhere so if you'd know where, do tell please.  Thanks.

I think you should difenitly contact the web site that you want to get
the information. You could also try the EFF Electronic Frontier
Foundation. http://www.eff.org/
They are a wonderful resource concerning legle maters and the internet

Sorry, but there's a fundamental lapse in my understanding,
apparently.  I am going to assume that your affiliate agreements with,
e.g., Audible.com, permit you to place information on Audible.com's
website, and you want to know what it is you can place on
Audible.com's site in terms of driving business to your site?  Is that
it?  That would all be governed by your affiliate agreement with
Audible.  If the agreement is silent on that point, then yes, you can
place a link back to your own site and you can place product
descriptions and reviews as well (as long as doing so does not violate
any third party copyrights or trademarks).

So if I am understanding this, then you can place a link to
learnoutloud.com on Audible.com (unless prohibited by the affiliate
agreement) and you can place materials of your own authorship or your
own trademarks with the link.  If you want to use content authored or
owned by a third party with your link, you will need that party's
permission.  So, for example, if Wired magazine wrote a review about
your site that said, "Learnoutloud.com is the best site since
Google.", you could place that review by a link to your site on
Audible.com as ling as you got Wired's permission to use the quote.

Am I close to understanding your question here?

Yes. This is more or less correct.  I'll just check the affiliate
deals to see what their policy is on this and if they're silent on the
matter we'll assume we can link to our site within reviews on their
site.  You can post it as an answer.

David, thanks, but I am not a Researcher, and thus my advice is free
to you.  I suppose a Researcher (whose names appear as links, whereas
mine and nelson's appear as plain text--see, e.g.,
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=419750 for an example
of a series of answers and comments showing both linked Researcher
names and non-linked commenters) could jump in here and post a formal
Answer and claim your $5.00, but that is not for me to determine.

Glad you found this helpful.

Well thanks a lot.  I'm new to this Google Answers so I didn't really
know who was a Researcher and who wasn't.  Now I do and you've led me
down the right paths concerning Internet Copyright Law.