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> I'm genuinely thrilled that someone at Apple deemed my chord calculator technology worthy of inclusion in the iOS shortcuts gallery. If anyone from Apple is r
by dcow 8y ago
> I'm genuinely thrilled that someone at Apple deemed my chord calculator technology worthy of inclusion in the iOS shortcuts gallery. If anyone from Apple is reading this, please reach out using JGuitar.com's contact form. We can work together to make this experience even better. I can provide high quality SVG images of all chord diagrams, support alternate tunings, instruments and more.
Is everyone missing the fact that the author seems quite happy about the exposure and reaches out to Apple at the bottom of the post offering collaboration? I'm sure they can handle themselves. It feels borderline patronizing to read all the comments about involving lawyers because Apple is being so abusive. When you publish something on the internet, people can link to it. That's how the internet works.
- cwingrav 8y agoAgain, this. When you publish work on the Internet, others can link and use it, no problem. For best results, have clear attribution (which they clearly show the link). I think people are too quick to anger here. This guy was already providing all this information and content. Looking at the site, I don't see advertising, so it's not like Apple is going around that. This guy is happy and with a quick addition of a JGuitar logo or copyright (if he wants) on those images then everyone is happy.
- gonmf 8y agoIn this case the author is happy, but the point stands that he wasn't asked. And most people would be angry at receiving no attribution or warning.
- piyush_soni 8y agoOh no. Whenever a corporate is trying to make 'bulk requests' to your website, primarily so that the users don't have to visit your site, it totally warrants for at least a permission (separate licensing, to be more fair). It's called freeloading otherwise.
- briandear 8y agoIs a “corporation” making bulk requests? Or are users of shortcuts making requests?
- piyush_soni 8y agoThe corporation is allowing it to happen. Users won't do it otherwise.
- masswerk 8y agoHm – Linking is one thing, displaying another one. Notably, we had (I don't know about all countries) rulings regarding displaying 3rd party content in frames, and then there's the EU copyright legislation, currently discussed. It's not the author's obligation to embed copyright and source information in any resource. This is not how it works.
- dwild 8y agoAre you sure you don't have an adblocker? There's ad over JGuitar, 2 of them actually. I hope he didn't have to add theses ads because of the increase of request.
- JepZ 8y agoI don't get it either... It's like calling a lawyer because Google links to your page.
- laumars 8y agoThis is more than just straight linking though, this is pulling content without attribution nor financial remuneration. To use the Google example, it would be like a 3rd party YouTube app that bypassed Google's advertising while still streaming content from YouTube's servers. Which is something Google have clamped down on in the past.
- fredley 8y agoThis isn't linking, this is hotlinking: taking unattributed images. If you had some nice images on your site that I'd put on mine, presenting them as my own, while still using your bandwidth to serve them to my users how would you feel about it? What about if I was the richest company on the planet already?
- JepZ 8y agoSo all this is about is bandwidth and attribution?!? I mean aren't they sending their users to your web page? Other people would be glad if they would just have to pay the hosting costs for an image to get people on their page.
- Fjolsvith 8y agoSounds to me like theft.
- JepZ 8y agoYou mean like stealing someone's business cards in order to promote his company?
- justtopost 8y ago
- slivym 8y agoThe reason everyone is reacting the way they are is because this news really isn't about this particular website. It's about the fact that the largest corporation on earth has decided it can freeboot everyone else's content. It's part of a trend too. Google a topic and on the right hand side of the page you'll see the first paragraph from Wikipedia. How exactly do you expect wikipedia to survive if no one ever has to actually go there to get the information it publishes? Not only is it an unethical way of presenting content - providing information without referencing the source, but it's actively damaging the source of the information by intercepting users who would otherwise use the service. The fact that "Oh well, it was fine this time" isn't a valid justification for why they decided to do it in the first place.
- zorked 8y ago> How exactly do you expect wikipedia to survive if no one ever has to actually go there Did they start running ads or something?
- piyush_soni 8y agoThey've been requesting for donations on their website, the main source of their income.
- zorked 8y agoThat doesn't mean you can't use Wikipedia's content in other ways, nor does it make it immoral to do so. I found this page which gives an overview of what's ok to do with their content. Mirroring is literally the first example they give. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Database_download https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Database_download
- piva00 8y agoIt doesn't mean that everyone that visits Wikipedia is going to donate. It means that they save a TON of bandwidth from people that would access Wikipedia for a specific information and bounce, it doesn't alienate the important part of Wikipedia's maintenance: editors and collaborators. So all-in-all the lost revenue from donations is more than covered by the savings in bandwidth.
- nevi-me 8y agoI recently found out that a contractor that won a tender with a government used my website without my consent. They were given my details and asked to reach out to me. They didn't, and instead linked to my website without any attribution. Should I be happy that the government is gaining a benefit from my work, something with commercial value, while I'm not benefiting? If my website was explicitly GNU or licensed under something that gives another person permission, then sure. Otherwise it's unfair for someone to make something out of my labour without reaching out to me and asking for at least permission.
- pbhjpbhj 8y agoIf you put a website online you're explicitly giving the right to link to it. If the government are not allowing use of their IPR then I think you have an argument, unless they're trying to stop linking to their stuff then I don't see the problem.
- nevi-me 8y agoIn South Africa, if you put your website online, you're automatically protected by our Intellectual Property Act under copyright protection. Unless I waive that copyright (which I haven't waived per my TOS on the website), whoever hotlinks to my website or derives financial gain without my consent is violating my rights per my country's Constitution. I don't see any "explicitly giving the right ..." there. In fact, I explicitly did the opposite.
- pbhjpbhj 8y agoYou realise the internet is global? You put up a "free food" sign, put chicken on the brai and now you want to stop people from helping themselves to the chicken. Take the website off the internet if you don't want to share it. /Charlie-bit-my-finger
- ryandrake 8y agoI’ve never understood this mentality. Why publish content on the Internet without access control if you don’t want people reading the content?
- sudhirj 8y agoIf I build a chart generator for use in one of my sites, hosted on that domain, with no published API whatsoever, it would be odd to see some random productivity app using that straight from peoples phones to chart their stuff. Not illegal, Apple or the developer isn’t claiming that my API is theirs. And maybe it’s open on my robots.txt and maybe my terms of service say nothing about it. But it’s weird. You just pushed an app out to a billion devices allows users to hit my chart generator directly. That’s plain weird.
- SyneRyder 8y ago> When you publish something on the internet, people can link to it. That's how the internet works. I think one issue is that Apple themselves prohibit it. From their App Store Review Guidelines, section 5.2.2 [1]: "5.2.2 Third Party Sites/Services: If your app uses, accesses, monetizes access to, or displays content from a third party service, ensure that you are specifically permitted to do so under the service’s terms of use. Authorization must be provided upon request." And Apple also prohibit you from doing so on parts of their website, from 4.5.1: "4.5.1 Apps may use approved Apple RSS feeds such as the iTunes Store RSS feed, but may not scrape any information from Apple sites (e.g. apple.com, the iTunes Store, App Store, App Store Connect, developer portal, etc.) or create rankings using this information." [1] https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#intellectual-property https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#int...
- threeseed 8y agoBeing a little disingenuous there. Scraping != Linking. Scraping involves stealing and reusing content from another party. Linking does not.
- dazmax 8y agoThis shortcut could be seen as scraping the website, since it's just pulling out one image
- JimA 8y agoScraping = save a local copy of the image Linking = point to source image If they are referring to jguitar.com each time then this is linking.
- ryandrake 8y agoI had an app in the AppStore for years that scraped Vonage’s web site and neither them nor Apple seemed to care. There is nothing innately immoral about downloading a web page and parsing it in ways the web site operator did not consider.
- tcfunk 8y ago> That's how the internet works. Not if the EU has anything to say about it!
- OnlyRepliesToBS 8y agodiminish and downplay, SOP