Just curious to know what others think about this situation. Let's say you buy a domain name that has recently expired, so now you are the new owner of that domain. While you are trying to decide what new content you want to use it for, you look it up on archive.org to see what the site used to look like. It was a personal site selling a product (such as shirts or something) years ago like 2003 or 2004. Is it legal to revive the site using what you found in archive.org? For example, pulling the old format and images and style sheets out of the archive and putting it together again. It will look nearly identical to the archived version, but updated with new products and so on. I was worried about copyright issues or intellectual property rights, but the original owner wasn't doing anything with it, did not register copyrights, and basically neglected the site and let it die (there is currently no method to contact whoever used to own the site, they are gone). Is it wrong for me to revive the site and try to run it under new management? Thanks in advance for everyone's input.
There's an implicit copyright on all material but they are very, very hard to enforce so even if you are in the wrong a) the old owner probably doesn't care; and b) the old owner is unlikely to get heavy with you. I would be very careful to make sure there are subtle differences - especially the logo! And ensure the owner isn't still in the business under another domain! Google their phone number, etc.