How do mashups avoid copyright infringement lawsuits?
kwamenum86: How do you know these sites are not retrieving content using RSS feeds?  In this case the "social contract" says that the content owner consent to syndication.In reality any reproduction of content is a violation of copyright law- no if, ands, or buts about it.  Even Google's act of displaying text from web pages in their search results is infringement but of course they are safe because they are so useful and the web would be nothing without search engines.  But there is no implicit permission being given.The same rule likely applies to mashups (although I do not know of any that have been taken to court.)  Why litigate if an app helps users consume your content (there are exceptions of course.  For example, if page views on your actual site decrease and you lose money as a result.)