Is it Legal to Mirror a website?

[Jabba]

I found some pretty good software to mirror a Website.

http://www.httrack.com/

Question: Is it legal to copy websites for reference purposes?

How about a website that has Free Videos and audios?

Legally, I'm allowed to browse the site and learn "online".

But what if I want to do the same "offline" Only difference is I'm getting rid of the need for an Internet connection...

Opinions?

[RayB]

Mirror to your hard-drive or mirror to your own public web server?

Mirror to your hard-drive would probably be considered "fair use"--no different than your browser cache. Mirroring to another public website would be infringement. Though sites like archive.org do it for archival purposes. Some companies have successfully forced archive.org to remove their site copies on the basis of copyright infringement.

[ChadTower]

Of course, if the webmaster doesn't want that to happen, they can configure their site to exclude serving to robots like winhttrack.

And, then to match, winhttrack can ignore robots settings. 

[Jabba]

Thanks Guys!

Thats what I figured. If its in the public domain, it is there to be mirrored.

[jbox]

Thanks Guys!

Thats what I figured. If its in the public domain, it is there to be mirrored.

If it is in the public domain, you can do pretty much anything with it. But, just so you are clear: hosting a website is not the same as public domain. By that logic I could just photocopy any book I find in the library, since it's obviously freely available for the public right?

Just because it is a different form of media doesn't make it a free-for-all of piracy. Stick with keeping your downloads at home under wraps and you will be fine, but don't ask for trouble by telling people about something you have copied until you are *sure* you are actually allowed to copy it.