The bizarre part of it is that they insist *Amazon's purpose* become the primary purpose of *your* Application. This is weird if you think of an entire ILS as the Application, since nobody could reasonably argue the overall purpose is to get Amazon more hits and sales.
It requires the terminological gymnastics I just described to control the scope of the Application (and therefore of their Terms). Other than that, I think everybody here should be OK w/ the link back condition, tastefully implemented. --Joe On Mon, Mar 16, 2009 at 4:50 PM, Nate Vack <njv...@wisc.edu> wrote: > On Mon, Mar 16, 2009 at 3:30 PM, Jonathan Rochkind <rochk...@jhu.edu> > wrote: > > > However, my understanding is that Worldcat forbids any use of those cover > > images _at all_. This is much more clear cut, and OCLC is much more > likely > > to care, then Amazon's more bizarre restrictions as to purpose. > > How is Amazon's restriction bizarre? As far as I can read, they're > saying "hey if you're using our data, we ask that you drive traffic to > us, OK?" That's totally reasonable; they, you know, sell books for a > living, and their API services aren't free to support. > > If you're using Amazon's cover images, you should provide a way for > Amazon to capitalize on that usage. Even if they don't cut you off > (because they don't catch you or don't care), linking to them is still > the morally right thing to do. > > Cheers, > -Nate >