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Websites Complaining About Screen-Scraping

Posted by michael on from the there's-always-a-whiner dept.

wilko11 writes "There have been two cases recently where websites have requested the removal of modules from CPAN. These modules could be used to access the websites (EuroTV and Streetmap) from a PERL program. The question being asked on the mailinglists (threads about EuroTV and about Streetmap) is 'can companies dictate what software you can use to access web content from their server?'"

2 of 432 comments (clear)

  1. Sure they can! by stile · · Score: 5, Interesting

    If we piss them off enough by chopping off their advertisements and snipping out their content, they'll just write their sites in Flash, or as one big image file, or some other proprietary format. That'll pretty well dictate what software you use to view their site.

  2. Don't they already??? by tacocat · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I am constantly greeted with messages to the tone of:

    You must have Windows Internet Explorer 4 or higher installed on your system to view this website

    How is this any different from what they are attempting to do here?

    I hate to disappoint, but I don't think that this is a new precedent. What is a new precedent is the notion that they can request the removal, or to make unavailable, software that is otherwise available

    The precedent here is not the software usage to access a website, but the notion that this can be extended to:

    Dear Mozilla.org,

    It has come to our attention that people are using your software to access our website. We don't like this are sending our legal team over to discuss the removal of your software application from the internet.

    Similarly, we are contacting Netscape, AOL, Opera, Konqueror, et al and removing them as well.

    Have a nice day!