5 ms·

As far as I can see, they weren't creating a facebook application, so I'm not sure why the Terms & conditions are relevant. If you run a public website, you ha

by axod 17y ago

As far as I can see, they weren't creating a facebook application, so I'm not sure why the Terms & conditions are relevant. If you run a public website, you have to accept that people may crawl your website. If you want to prevent it, don't let them crawl it. That's what robots.txt is for.

sp332 17y ago
The information is copyrighted. Redistribution without prior written permission from the copyright owner is illegal.
- axod 17y ago
  Can you copyright someone elses name and the names of their friends?
  - dhimes 17y ago
    No
  - tedunangst 17y ago
    You can't copyright somebody's name and address, but you can copyright a map showing where everybody lives. That actually sounds like what Pete was doing, but Facebook could make similar claims about some of the information they provide. Everything from stock prices to the temperature is in theory uncopyrightable, but you can still run into trouble if you just scrape some site and republish it.
    - dedward 17y ago
      You can't copyright facts, but you can copyright collections of facts. This could have been an interesting case. And regarding robots.txt - it's by no means anything more than a suggestion and common courtesy.. it's a way to suggest to crawlers what to ignore and how to behave with your site, to their benefit and yours - it's not by itself a legally binding, well, anything..... it was just a convention for all parties to unofficially cooperate.
      - shard 17y ago
        You can't copyright facts, but you can copyright collections of facts. It depends, re: the oft cited example of phone books being uncopyrightable,
        Lazlo_Nibble 17y ago
        There has to be some kind of creative component to the compilation. And arguably Facebook didn't even compile the data in the first place -- it'd be like a college claiming a compilation copyright on the band fliers, roommate requests, and lost-pet ads pinned to a bulletin board in the student union building.
DrJokepu 17y ago
As far as I understand, the problem was not crawling the website, it was the way he used to data he gained by crawling.
- echaozh 17y ago
  I think it's quite ridiculous. If I buy a map, can I use it to be a guide, giving people directions and make a living? If I buy a story book, can I use it to read to children and collect money from their parents? Or, if I spend some time to index all the books in the library, can I sell the index and make money? Or did I violate the rights of either the library or the books' copyright owners? I think crawling and making use of the crawled data is not offending the copyright law because it's not actually a copy of the data. Rather, it's a service to transform the data and help other people get to the original data in an easier way. Technically, they can crawl the data on the spot when receiving a request from their clients. In order to speed up the process, they somehow cache the data crawled from earlier occasions. But that's technical details, which is encapsulated. Otherwise, they could have stored URLs and offsets in the pages, rather than the data itself. I don't think that breaks the law, or there will be no way to avoid breaking the law to refer to anything.
  - DrJokepu 17y ago
    A couple of examples: if you rent a DVD from one of those DVD rental places, normally you can't play it in public places like bars and places like that. If you buy a CD you can't broadcast it on your radio station, you need a special licence for that. Another possible related issue is the question of derivative works (e.g. the index of a library). There's a Wikipedia article about derivative works, it's a bit too complex to summarize here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derivative_work http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derivative_work
    - blasdel 17y ago
      Two extraordinarily poor examples! Both films and music (plus songwriting too) have been explicitly enshrined by US copyright law as having separate rights for home use and public performance. Each has multiple spheres of statutory licensing organizations with special exemptions from anti-trust law.

by axod 17y ago

sp332 17y ago

The information is copyrighted. Redistribution without prior written permission from the copyright owner is illegal.

axod 17y ago
Can you copyright someone elses name and the names of their friends?
- dhimes 17y ago
  No
- tedunangst 17y ago
  You can't copyright somebody's name and address, but you can copyright a map showing where everybody lives. That actually sounds like what Pete was doing, but Facebook could make similar claims about some of the information they provide. Everything from stock prices to the temperature is in theory uncopyrightable, but you can still run into trouble if you just scrape some site and republish it.
  - dedward 17y ago
    You can't copyright facts, but you can copyright collections of facts. This could have been an interesting case. And regarding robots.txt - it's by no means anything more than a suggestion and common courtesy.. it's a way to suggest to crawlers what to ignore and how to behave with your site, to their benefit and yours - it's not by itself a legally binding, well, anything..... it was just a convention for all parties to unofficially cooperate.
    - shard 17y ago
      You can't copyright facts, but you can copyright collections of facts. It depends, re: the oft cited example of phone books being uncopyrightable,
      - Lazlo_Nibble 17y ago
        There has to be some kind of creative component to the compilation. And arguably Facebook didn't even compile the data in the first place -- it'd be like a college claiming a compilation copyright on the band fliers, roommate requests, and lost-pet ads pinned to a bulletin board in the student union building.

DrJokepu 17y ago

As far as I understand, the problem was not crawling the website, it was the way he used to data he gained by crawling.

echaozh 17y ago
I think it's quite ridiculous. If I buy a map, can I use it to be a guide, giving people directions and make a living? If I buy a story book, can I use it to read to children and collect money from their parents? Or, if I spend some time to index all the books in the library, can I sell the index and make money? Or did I violate the rights of either the library or the books' copyright owners? I think crawling and making use of the crawled data is not offending the copyright law because it's not actually a copy of the data. Rather, it's a service to transform the data and help other people get to the original data in an easier way. Technically, they can crawl the data on the spot when receiving a request from their clients. In order to speed up the process, they somehow cache the data crawled from earlier occasions. But that's technical details, which is encapsulated. Otherwise, they could have stored URLs and offsets in the pages, rather than the data itself. I don't think that breaks the law, or there will be no way to avoid breaking the law to refer to anything.
- DrJokepu 17y ago
  A couple of examples: if you rent a DVD from one of those DVD rental places, normally you can't play it in public places like bars and places like that. If you buy a CD you can't broadcast it on your radio station, you need a special licence for that. Another possible related issue is the question of derivative works (e.g. the index of a library). There's a Wikipedia article about derivative works, it's a bit too complex to summarize here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derivative_work http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derivative_work
  - blasdel 17y ago
    Two extraordinarily poor examples! Both films and music (plus songwriting too) have been explicitly enshrined by US copyright law as having separate rights for home use and public performance. Each has multiple spheres of statutory licensing organizations with special exemptions from anti-trust law.