Can I be sued?

This may be a silly question but apparently there are linking laws well atleast in Australia. With the directory im about to launch, I have been submitting sites by myself to fill it up, and copying/pasting descriptions from the site to use for my listings. Anyway can I be sued for anything, since I havent had their permission to add their link. I believe Im safe, since Search Engines dont ask before adding sites to themselves? Sry just a bit scared now

 

I don't think you can be sued; after all ODP adds sites without owners approval (and deletes them too, by the sound of it). Most sites wouldn't be upset by a free link anyway, as every link helps. Just don't infringe copyright. Perhaps make up your own site descriptions if you're really unsure.

 

but if you'll be sued the story will probably hit the news big time, so think positive

 

There's no such thing as bad publicity?

 

I'm not a lawyer nor am I Australian so I don't know the ins and outs of the system, but I would imagine the number of people moronic enough to sue someone for linking to their website from a directory is very very small.

 

Never underestimate the power of human stupidity

 

You would be surprised. I have seen posts demanding that the ODP remove the listing for the site they are trying to SEO - with legal threats if they didn't.

They felt (and I am not familiar enough with SEO to know for sure how justified it is) that the wording used in the listing was hurting their SERPS and they would rather have no listing than one without their keywords being included.

If there have actually been any lawsuits, I have not heard of them, so it's possible they were just empty threats. I agree with other posters that, if such lawsuits were filed and were successful, it would have been big news by now.

But if you are willing to include whatever keywords the SEO wants into tthe listing, and to verify that the person providing the listing really is the owner and isn't trying to misrepresent a site they don't own, then I think you are on pretty safe ground it wouldn't be in their interests to sue you.

 

You said that you are submitting yourself . I hope that you are not visiting the respective sites and picking email adresses . Most directories do not accept submissions without an email .I don't know about yours . If You are doing it WITHOUT Email , then I am sure that no one will sue you . Also are you taking these details from PRINT , or Meta tags .
If you still feel that something could fire back , then change the title , description a little .
Hope this was useful.

 

Just make sure that they can contact you if they want their listing removed and it shouldn't be a problem.

 

Well since Im the admin I dont need there email address to add sites, but yes normally members would. What Ive been doing is using the meta descriptions but if there sammy I'll edit them otherwise I go to the sites about us page and copy/paste a part from there.

I might just edit the descriptions I have a little bit, but yeah it's gonna be a lot of wasted time and work for me