Can a third party use user comments posted on news websites for data mining purposes without explicit permission from the users or the news website, particularly for the following countries: USA, UK, India.
The comments wouldn't be reproduced or reprinted in their original format, and personal user information would not be required.
You should check out the website's privacy policy or terms of use. If they have explicitly stated that every content written or produced is strictly reserved, then I do think they "should not" be reproduced.
But you see, as long as the content is visible to people, there is a chance that somebody will scrape the content. There is nothing much you can do about it.
