merlyn@stonehenge.com (Randal L. Schwartz) writes: >>>>>> "jobst" == jobst müller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > jobst> to admit - i am a Perl-novice and ihave not so much experience in > jobst> perl. But i am willing to learn. i want to learn perl. As for now i > jobst> have to solve some tasks for the college. I have to do some > jobst> investigations on a board where i have no access to the db. > > If you don't have access to the database, what makes you think you have > permission to run a robot against the web API? > > Where are the ethics trainings when we need it? Sheesh. > > In other words, to make it very clear: > > DO NOT ATTEMPT TO DO THIS
Really? If I understood the OP correctly, all he wants to do is 'screen scrape' the (public) board in question. In other words, nothing significantly different from what Google does when it indexes. I don't really see an ethical (as opposed to legal - IANAL!) problem with that. Of course, I would first email the admin for permission, and make *sure* that such a bot is 'well behaved' - such as adding calls to sleep inside some of those loops. After he gets the data, he could do something unethical with it - like republish it. But just getting the data doesn't seem wrong to me. As I said above, I am not a lawyer! The above should not be taken to mean I think it is legal to do this. But it does sound ethical to me. -RN -- Robin Norwood Red Hat, Inc. "The Sage does nothing, yet nothing remains undone." -Lao Tzu, Te Tao Ching -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <http://learn.perl.org/> <http://learn.perl.org/first-response>
