3 ms·

OP - couple of things: 1) I know now who mapmyride is but who are you? What is your company? You don't mention it which, IMO, is a mistake. I've typed mapmyrid

OP - couple of things: 1) I know now who mapmyride is but who are you? What is your company? You don't mention it which, IMO, is a mistake. I've typed mapmyride now 4-5 times yet don't know your company's name at all. 2) No, I think you were right to pay attention to the C&D. Are you in a high margin business and you are the key player? For example, you are one of four companies worldwide making a product that people "have to have" and you can charge 1000% of your cost? Those are the types of businesses that can easily afford to ignore C&Ds. In businesses where there are a small set of customers and you have to fight, fight, fight to get every single customer, your time is better spent in customer acquisition, marketing, and feature dev than in the attorney's office or the courtroom. You can listen to all the folks who suggest dodgy tactics but how will you feel if you accept such advice and later get sued? It won't matter that it was the customers' IP addresses that accessed the server, will it? You'll be the one not focusing on customer acquisition, etc b/c you'll be in court. Where will the marketing budget go? To the attorney. Doesn't matter if you were right/wrong, does it? And what if mapmyride (there, I said it again - I'm going to go to that site now!) decides to send C&D letters to your customers? Or to sue your customers?

cullenking 16y ago
Thanks for pointing out my lack of reference to our site. http://ridewithgps.com http://ridewithgps.com mapmyride is the key player in the market, in terms of userbase and, recently, a $5 million A round. I am more wary now they have VC's, who may be more aggressive than mmr ever would have been in other circumstances. At least, that's my assumption. I can't imagine MMR would sue their own customers over it, that would be downright suicidal as far as public opinion goes. However, that is duly noted. I wonder if I can convince a particularly feisty/intrepid user to maintain this piece of software, pulling the risk away from us primarily ;) Hmmm. Thanks for the advice, definitely something to think about.
- MortenK 16y ago
  This has "don't do it" written all over. If i were mapmyride, i'd find your screenscraping to be dodgy and opportunistic. If i found this thread and saw you contemplating how to avoid their cease and desist and not get caught, i would be royally pissed off. When you piss on business people, especially the ones with 5 mill in the bank, dont be surprised when they come after you on grounds of principles.

cullenking 16y ago

Thanks for pointing out my lack of reference to our site. http://ridewithgps.com http://ridewithgps.com mapmyride is the key player in the market, in terms of userbase and, recently, a $5 million A round. I am more wary now they have VC's, who may be more aggressive than mmr ever would have been in other circumstances. At least, that's my assumption. I can't imagine MMR would sue their own customers over it, that would be downright suicidal as far as public opinion goes. However, that is duly noted. I wonder if I can convince a particularly feisty/intrepid user to maintain this piece of software, pulling the risk away from us primarily ;) Hmmm. Thanks for the advice, definitely something to think about.

MortenK 16y ago
This has "don't do it" written all over. If i were mapmyride, i'd find your screenscraping to be dodgy and opportunistic. If i found this thread and saw you contemplating how to avoid their cease and desist and not get caught, i would be royally pissed off. When you piss on business people, especially the ones with 5 mill in the bank, dont be surprised when they come after you on grounds of principles.