At 01:32 -0600 2/7/03, Jonathan Scott Duff wrote:
Indeed, regardless of the copyright implications.He wrote a piece of software that specifically connects to EuroTV.com and only EuroTV.com. Microsoft et alia didn't. It's one thing to do that for your own personal use and quite another to tell the world how to do it. (Can anyone see the DoS implications?)
Having been involved in trying to run a search engine commercially, I know that websites that put a frame around your website, use your resources that you have to pay for, but don't pay for them.
Even worse in that respect, and more like this situation, are the meta-search engines, that just take your results and mangle them into something they seem to feel makes sense (yes, there is a lot of frustration there).
Apparently there is a definite need for this type of information. What I don't understand is that EuroTV doesn't take this opportunity to channel this need into something more constructive, such as a "pay per download" webservice of some sort. People all over the world are paying for magazines with program information. Surely the added value of being able to constrain with your personal parameters on that ever increasing amount of information, should have some value? The "My Guide" functionality on the EuroTV website in that respect is quite insufficient. (I wanna know where Buffy is showing now! ;-)
Furthermore, it should be considered that EuroTV is maybe reacting this way because of the legal battles that have been fought to get at the information in the first place. Particularly in the Netherlands where, I think until recently, the program information was under a monopoly of the broadcasting organizations and was not allowed to be distributed in full in any media other than those broadcasting organization's own magazines.
Just my 2 eurocents worth...
Liz
