In some websites, i hae found them re-using the exact same news articles on their own site. Is this legal if I wanted to just post news on my own site?
No, it is not legal. If you see sights that are doing it, there are three possibilities: 1) they are infringing on copyright and haven't been caught, or 2) they have worked out a deal with the agencies they get the news from and pay to have the rights to display these articles, or 3) the site, people that run the site, and the business are all in a country that does not recognize copyright (or at least the copyright of other countries).
What you could think about is reporting the news that these articles report, but in your own style.. it's not a good idea for informational articles, guides, etc, as that would be plagiarism - but for factual stories about current events, you can kind of "regurgitate" the news. Just don't copy it!
Actually, lots of news services offer free-to-use RSS feeds...news articles are widely shared and without infringement by Associated Press, for example. RSS is meant for syndication, and, depending on where the article originated, it may have become available for public use when it was distributed through AP. People abuse this when injecting RSS feeds in their content without permission, but large news services generally allow reprinting with attribution or even without. News is meant to be spread. So I would disagree that it must be illegal or from a country not recognizing copyright. The news from many sources may be legitimately reused.
AP articles are not available for general public use and reprinting. You must purchase the rights to display their articles and all are copyrighted. The RSS feeds of AP and other news organizations provide headlines that will direct users back to the site the content originated from. For the most part, they do not actually contain articles. Of the RSS feeds that do contain articles, I have yet to see (not that I've seen them all) a major news company provide an RSS feed that allows in the ToS for the articles to be reprinted on other peoples web pages. Just because a site offers an RSS feed does not mean they give you the right to reprint it. By the same token, if a site does offer such an RSS feed but the articles come from some other site that has not given them the rights to distribute to others for the purpose of reprinting then you still don't have rights to it. If you have an example of a site that offers a free RSS feed that contains the complete article (not just the headlines), explicitly gives the right to reprint on a webpage, and the copyright for the content is controlled by the provider of the RSS feed, then please provide it.
What they should be doing is referencing the article and linking back to its source. The exeption would be somelike like Wikipedia which does allow content to be taken for outside use.
You can copy the same article but you need to put the link back to original source. you cannot edit the original content of that article.
The last comment by JoeHardy is not correct. You cannot copy articles without permission. Providing a link back to the original content does not absolve you of copyright infringement. The law is completely clear on that point. As explained by others, you could freely publish RSS feeds, and you can purchase the right to publish from news outlets like the Associated Press. Also, many companies issue press releases and post them to their company website. I am of the opinion that if a company posts a press release to their website they are giving permission for others to copy. That is the whole point of sending out the press release - to get others to pick up the press release and give the company publicity. I hope this helps. -Gene Copyright Law
@ glen - doing that is often actually illegal. Passing copyscape doesn't make it legal. You don't have the legal write to edit / rewrite someone's protected content without their permission. Your words have to be completely unique and your own... not "copyscape unique." There is no "safe" percentage of an article you have to change to be legally protected either, short of everything (and even that's not always true). @JoeHardy You're right that you can't edit someone's protected work and then publish it on your site, but you're wrong in saying you can publish their work with a link back. It's illegal... copyright infringement. You can quote a brief passage from it, cite the source, and then add your own completely unique commentary... that would generally fall within fair use guidelines. @ipwatchdog You can't always publish an RSS feed on a site where you're monetizing the content. It's your responsibility to check the site TOS or RSS TOS on a site before taking that risk. Some sites offer the feeds only as a courtesy for their readers to use privately, and you're not able to treat it as site content. As for press releases, they're also protected by copyright, although in most cases you're free to use them. If you're using them to report the news, you'll generally be fine, as they're intended for that (although it's extremely bad form to take the "lazy" route... a release is actually designed to incite further research and deeper reporting on the news topic). There are, however, some cases where you cannot simply take a press release and use it as you like. An example I gave recently to someone else would be for owners of small press release distribution sites. If they were to take a press release issued to a major newswire and publish it as-is on their own press release distribution site, they would be implying it was submitted by the company (essentially that the company somehow endorses their service, and having the big names could directly influence other potential customers thereby using their trademarked names to profit off of them), and they could definitely find themselves in hot water over something like that.