MetaSearch engines

Hi,

In a previous thread on deep linking, I witnessed a great deal of discussion
on the copyright issues. While this had got me thinking, it was with respect
to the following:

What are the copyright issues involved in building a meta search engine like
metacrawler or mamma.com which display the search results of many search
engines.

a) Since the data is anyway in public domain, what form of ownership do the
search engines exercise on their results?

b) Does the scenario change if this project were open source?

The other issue is linking to search engines using my site's interface.
(i.e.) I have a text box for the search query and a drop down box for a
choice of SEs. Once the user enters a term the user is redirected to the
search engine and the results are displayed by the SE's webpage. I have seen
most portals seem to offer this sort of an option, is this deep linking?

And what if I display the results not on a website but on a downloaded piece
of software?

This project might be potentially open source. I'm a student and I don't
think I can afford any sort of usage agreement with any of the major SEs.
Ofcourse I always have Dmoz to bank on since I know it's use is free.

Thanks,

-Srini

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