I havent found any definitive answer for this.

is it illegal to distribute *free apps* that display html content ( without modifying ) by querying external websites ?

I know that some websites provide apis's to access their content, but the majority dont have it , so to create the query in your app and get the data to display it on the phone using a *free app*, would this also count as web scraping and be considered illegal ?
Perhaps some of those websites rely on advertising for revenue so may be case to case also ?

I think all of us creating apps must be aware of this so we dont end up in legal issues, and also hosting on maemo.org would only highten the problem.
are there any rules imposed by maemo.org on this ?

thanks.