On Feb 28, Jared Greenwald <greenwaldja...@gmail.com> wrote: > the only people I could see having issue with that would be IMDb > since they are the content owners.
Realistically you're right, but I've not read the google-apps ToS, so I'm not sure what can be done and what is forbidden. > That being said I think that at some level once the data is out > there it can be mined by whoever wants. More or less. Keeping in mind that I'm not a lawyer, we have two cases here: 1. the data in the plain text files (accessible through IMDbPY's 'sql' and 'local' data access systems): free for personal use, you just don't have to profit from it (this excludes redistribution, selling services based on these data, and any form of gain, no matter how indirect). This is not the case of Google-Apps, since I tend to exclude you can/want to put >4GB of data on their cloud for your own fun. :-) 2. the data from their web server (via IMDbPY's 'http' and 'mobile'). Provided that you must respect the above conditions, there's the fact that you're using their resources. As long as you do for your own personal and non-commercial usage, I _think_ you're on pretty solid legal ground. At least in Europe, _as far as I know_ once you've got (in a non-illegal way, that is!) a piece of something (text, music, video) you can do whatever you want _for you own personal use_ (modify, remix, ...). As above, redistribution and any kind of profit is absolutely forbidden. Sure, using IMDbPY you're not seeing their ads - but that's true even for a lot of proxy out there (e.g.: I use privoxy) or firefox adds-on. So we're only providing an easy way for users and developers to access and organize some data. It's up to the users to respect the copyright of that data: it can be used legally (personal and non-commercial), and I've always discouraged publicly and privately anyone who showed any will to use these data otherwise. I.e.: using it for your own fun? Fine! Using it to enable your open source program to access these data (btw: our own programs add the "Filmography links and data courtesy of IMDb" notice)? Fine! The story is different if you're making any money out of it. > I also find it hard to believe that there would be issue with > someone's non-commercial site even if it is ad-supported. I won't be that sure. For what is worth, _I_ would be more than a little upset, finding something I legally own (the code I write, for example...) used by someone else for profit (and weigh that even the prevention of a loss, is to be considered a profit - at least for the Italian code) without my consent. After all, that's what licences of use are for (free software ones, too). Moreover, consider that it can be seen as a precedent, especially if used on a huge beast as google-apps + google-ads (in many fields, the Highly Estimated And Respected Competitor(tm) of IMDb's corporate mummy: Amazon ;-) HTH, IMHO, YMMV, IANAL and any other acronym you can think of. :-) -- Davide Alberani <davide.alber...@gmail.com> [PGP KeyID: 0x465BFD47] http://erlug.linux.it/~da/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Open Source Business Conference (OSBC), March 24-25, 2009, San Francisco, CA -OSBC tackles the biggest issue in open source: Open Sourcing the Enterprise -Strategies to boost innovation and cut costs with open source participation -Receive a $600 discount off the registration fee with the source code: SFAD http://p.sf.net/sfu/XcvMzF8H _______________________________________________ Imdbpy-devel mailing list Imdbpy-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/imdbpy-devel
