Slashdot Mirror
Websites Complaining About Screen-Scraping
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?'"
If you don't want your content being redisplayed on another site, place appropriate copyright and seek protections therein.
Don't stifle the technology. Treat the cause, not the symptom.
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
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.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
So far as apps are concerned, again no.
There's no law stating that we have to look at ads. Although I see the problem paying the bills, a flaw in a business model is not the problem of the application coder (namely: me, you, and most people reading this site).
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
I am constantly greeted with messages to the tone of:
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:
... don't put merchandise in the windows.
Just like you can listen to unencrypted radio broadcasts through the airwaves as much as you want, or stand next to a group of people talking and listen in, you can view web pages that are served openly over the Internet.
If you are going to be presenting something for people to observe, they can observe it however they like. Legislate all you want, but this is a fundamental component of logical (as opposed to legal) privacy.
There are a multitude of methods for providing different content based on what the client browser returns on certain environment variables. While I think it's silly to demand that modules be removed from CPAN, it's entirely up to the people running the server to determine who they want to serve content to....and who they dont.
:)
If they can't figure out how to do it serverside (or with clientside scripting) then that's their problem.
That's the bitch about open standards....EVERYONE can use them....
They should do as many of us do and learn a lesson from Google.
It is a violation of Google's terms of use for you to "screen scrape" search results. You can implement their API using a free key and achieve similar results, however.
Not only are these companies approaching the "problem" from the wrong angle in terms of common sense, they are also taking the most difficult approach. It is practically impossible to seek to outlaw software that fetches Web content, because Web browsers and wget (for example) are the same thing, HTTP clients. The HTTP protocol is an open standard that anyone can implement. If you don't want a valid HTTP client accessing your server, don't make your server an HTTP server.
Stated another way, don't try to take an open standard and restrict everyone else's use of it to suit your own needs. You don't see me (an avid soccer player) trying to get the NBA to change the rules of their game to require use of the feet for ball control. If I want to play basketball, I have to play by the rules, else I am not really playing basketball.
This is just another example of gross technical incompetence by executives and lawyers.
A company that attaches an HTTP server receives an HTTP GET request complete with some information in its headers. They have a reasonable case to request that that information be accurate. They have unilateral technical ability to firewall IP's or whole subnets. Otherwise, once they receive a GET request, when the machine that they have configured responds by sending a file, they have granted explicit permission to process that file consistent with the info in the GET request.
The owner of the server is completely in control at a technical level. If they don't like what you are doing, they can firewall you. Absent a contractual agreement not to, you have the permission to send ***REQUESTS*** for anything you would like to request. They can say no. If you lie in your request, then they have a case to say your use is unauthorized, but short of that, there should be no need to have the judicial system rewrite the technology.
I find it sad that so many people seem to think it is just fine to mine their site for data. Sure, there's not all that much that they can do about it, except remove the data or make it harder for regular users of the site to use it.
For example, The EuroTV site seems to work on the concept that they provide the information for free for users of their site, but you can pay them to get it on your site. They're using their site as an advert for their services, while at the same time offering a useful service to the community. By making freely available a system to allow anybody to use their data in their own websites without paying them for it, you're completely ridding them of their reason for having the site up at all.
Yes, you can argue that they shouldn't put the information out there if they don't want people to use it, but then you're giving them a good reason not to put the information out there at all, which makes all of us poorer.
As for whether they can dictate that CPAN remove the modules, certainly it's fair enough of them to request that the module be removed, but it is a shame they leapt to threats of lawsuits quite so quickly.
This was not ever realized, I believed mostly because of overpaid "web designers".
But the Semantic Web would require many funny user agents for all kinds of things.
Clearly, if this kind of thinking is allowed to persist in corporate headquarters, it will kill the Semantic Web before it gets started.
I wonder what Tim Berners-Lee thinks about this...
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
One of the biggest sites that I've not seen anyone mention is eBay. Following is in their eula:
Our Web site contains robot exclusion headers and you agree that you will not use any robot, spider, other automatic device, or manual process to monitor or copy our Web pages or the content contained herein without our prior expressed written permission.
You agree that you will not use any device, software or routine to bypass our robot exclusion headers, or to interfere or attempt to interfere with the proper working of the eBay site or any activities conducted on our site.
You agree that you will not take any action that imposes an unreasonable or disproportionately large load on our infrastructure.
Much of the information on our site is updated on a real time basis and is proprietary or is licensed to eBay by our users or third parties. You agree that you will not copy, reproduce, alter, modify, create derivative works, or publicly display any content (except for Your Information) from our Web site without the prior expressed written permission of eBay or the appropriate third party.
Now why they do this is obvious, they have an absolute goldmine of information and they want to be able to take advantage of it when they're good and ready. I assume other sites could adopt this type of eula, which wouldn't make the software itself illegal, but would make using it so (or at least until someone challenges it).
didn't you read the terms of service agreement you were handed at birth (us citizens only) that states any bypassing of ads during receipt of content is theft?
I'm just waiting for ashcroft's goons to knock on my door, find the tivo and haul my ass off to jail.
Remember when the web -- no, remember when the net was about sharing information? I miss that time. If somebody wrote a cool front end to your service, it was COOL and more power to them. If it made your service (site, whatever) more accessible, that mean more people were looking at your stuff, and that was COOL.
Now we have entities that threaten legal action for accessing the stuff they've made publically available. There may actually be a case when the software scrapes and repackages the content (or, more importantly, redistributes it), but I hope the stuff about decoding the URL for easy use is bogus. I have my doubts that a court will see it my way, but still I hope for reason. Nevertheless, the whole idea makes me sad and nostalgic.
Another thought: is my mozilla vulnerable to this sort of action because it blocks ads -- essentially repackaging the server output for display to me? Now I'm really depressed.
--
bachiatari na torisetsu o yome!
Ahem. Bullshit.
I think this is something we're going to start seeing a lot of in coming years. Right now, the Internet in general is going through growing pains, and the pressure is starting to show in these "free services" type sites ( i.e. Mapquest )
/. I believe others would as well.
I don't know about these site in particular, but many of the big sites around today were built with the failed dot-com business model of delivering free content and selling advertising that ran on the page (or popped up behind it.) This, of course, is dependant on people viewing the site in a browser. If people get the information without using a browser, therefore never seeing the ads, the advertisers won't want to spend any money on the site.
Another problem is, most companies don't want to take the risks associated with innovation, so instead they seek legal action to maintain the good thing they have going. While this is a quick fix, and in the company's best interests, we need companies to present a new business model to the public and see how it gets adopted. I would pay an annual subscription fee for things like Mapquest.com, tvguide.com and maybe even
Porn sites, Ebay auctions, games such as Everquest and services such as Apple's dot-mac are online services that subscribers happily pay for because more than anything, they are quality products(well, some of the porn is). If the company's revenue is coming from its users, they would be a lot less concerned about how the information is being distributed.
This isn't such a radical change, as they could add a premium subscription service, and slowly transition the focus of their business towards it. Wouldn't it be cool if I could write my own mapping application ( or download a pre-made one from the site ) and have it connect to xml.mapquest.com, give my username and password, and retrieve the data I requested.
Hell, the simplest would be an easy reading comprehension or logic test with a short-answer blank - the computer would never get it, and all humans would.
My guess is that soon, people who REALLY want you out will keep you out.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
but they can dictate whether you get the content or not
Yes, they can. They have the option of not putting it on a public webserver in the first place. Beyond that, they have no control over who sees it and how. They can use various technological measures to try to control access, but short of forcing some form of user authentication via a secure proprietary client, the ad-blockers and scrapers *WILL* win.
If they are getting no ad impressions, then they are getting no money.
This statement seems a common way of viewing these issues (Ad blocking, scraping, whatever). However, realize that they don't have a "right" to make money just because they offer otherwise-free content online. They offer that content in the *HOPE* of making money, but that comes with no guarantees. And yes, I go to the kitchen during commercials, or change the station, or fast-forward.
I see the problem as involving how offensive these sites make the ads. I find Flash and Shockwave ads so offensive (and, I find that they often crash my browser - the huge offensive Flash ad currently on the Onion, for example, crashes my browser every time) that I simply browse with them disabled. Pop(up/under) ads bother me enough that I have the "dom.disable_open_during_load" preference set to completely block them. In comparison, the small, unintrusive text ad in the upper left of K5's front page doesn't bother me at all, and I've even *clicked* on it a few times.
Companies (not just advertisers, but those who serve such ads) need to realize that more annoying ads do make an impression - a strongly negative one. If I want their products, *I'll* seek *them* out. If they detract from my web browsing experience, I will specifically make a point of seeking out their *competitors* if I need something they offer.
In case any marketing folks read this, I'll mention the last ad I *DID* watch - The one with the hamster and rabbit from Blockbuster. Why? Because I found the ad sufficiently amusing to watch, on its own merits. Important point there. It didn't annoy me, and it had value all by itself. *THAT* makes a positive impression on a potential customer. I don't even know what the hampster and rabbit talked about, but it doesn't matter, I remember that "Blockbuster amused me for 30 seconds". Making me waste a few minutes to figure out how to filter out your crap does *not* make a good impression. I will remember "X10 pissed me off for 30 seconds, let's visit Logitech's cam offerings instead".
There's no law stating that we have to look at ads.
What about 17 USC 106, which states that barring fair use, etc., the copyright owner has the right to prevent others from creating derivative works of a web page?
Will I retire or break 10K?
If you put something on the web, you have to assume that people are going to access that information in any way that they possibly can.
I suppose the big complaint is that people might not be viewing the "ads" on pages if they use certain HTTP clients.
I have a suggestion for the sites that are complaining. If you don't like it, don't put stuff on the web. Write your own custom client-server solution if you don't want people accessing it with certain browsers or other software.
If you are depending on ad banners for your revenues, you and advertisers are taking a "risk" that people might not see the ads, or that they might not buy advertised products. Tough luck if you lose out on your bet. Hopefully you have a solid way of making money related to whatever service you are providing to make up for it.
Whining about lost ad revenue and such is the same as whining about losing money in Las Vegas. You should have assessed the risks before playing the game.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
Actually, this is a field that is quickly being considered a new Turing test for the computer vision field. It is actually very easy to make pictures that humans can read and that machines currently can't. Look up more info on it here.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
EuroTV has a robots.txt file that asks to leave the various /scripts directories alone. If this Perl module is just ignoring that robots.txt file, then that is just rude, although I don't see how it is illegal.
Streetmap doesn't even have a robots.txt file, so I don't see why they are whining about it.
Although I can see why these websites could get upset. The TV-listing screen scrapers are especially bad at hammering a site relentlessly for a sustained period of time to obtain all of the programming information for a certian broadcast area. The scraper has to hit the site repeatedly to obtain all of the information, since it isn't all displayed on a single page. If any one of these scrapers gets to be really popular, it could kill the site.
Of course, the solution to that is to make all of the listing available as one big chunk to avoid repeated requests. But then the site goes out of business in a few weeks due to lack of advertising revenue.
I, for one, wish I could buy a subscription to zap2it.com that would give me fast, easy access to the channel listings in, say, XMLTV format. Is $25/year a reasonable fee, considering that I would only hit the site once a day at the most, and grab a single file?
"Tomorrow's forecast: a few sprinkles of genius with a chance of doom!" - Stewie Griffin
Even if he had provided a tool to make a copy of a map, which he did not, there is nothing at all wrong with making and supplying others with that tool. It's how the tool is used that is the issue, and a tool that has legitimate useful uses can never be allowed to be the target of such a complaint or suit.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.