On Thu, 6 Feb 2003 21:44:20 +0100, "Bas A. Schulte" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>They're just too ignorant that they think they can publish the data for >everyone to see can only be seen through their own website. [...] >Anyway, I'd love to hear anyone on this with some legal knowledge. I >don't believe at all that this will hold up in a court of law. I think this discussion is missing the point. It should not be: "What can we legally get away with?", but "Do we have the courtesy to respect the wishes of publishers of information?", even if their wishes might not be legally enforceable. Since this is about Perl advocacy, I would like to quote a bit of Perl culture: "It [Perl] would prefer that you stayed out of its living room because you weren't invited, not because it has a shotgun." I think the same rules should apply for screenscrapers too: If website owners don't want their pages to be scraped, then people shouldn't do it and get their information elsewhere. It is like honoring a robots.txt file. It is probably not enforceable, but it is the right thing to do. Cheers, -Jan PS: I'm not saying that "they" weren't the first ones to break the rules of politeness by threatening a law-suit, instead of just asking for the modules removal. But that doesn't mean that one has to respond in kind.
