4 ms·

My company, Alan Ross Machinery, is the plaintiff in this case. Happy to answer questions to the extent legal counsel will permit it. I can tell you the case re

My company, Alan Ross Machinery, is the plaintiff in this case. Happy to answer questions to the extent legal counsel will permit it. I can tell you the case remains active, stay tuned...

pavel_lishin 8y ago
It seems like y'all are sort of an ebay/craigslist for industrial machinery, right? What benefit does scraping your site give someone else? If someone posts your listings on their site, how do they connect would-be buyers with the sellers, anyway?
- rossmachinery 8y ago
  Without products to list eBay has no business. So, there's a strong incentive for companies who want to be in the space to acquire listings through a variety of means, including some means they ought not to.
  - donaltroddyn 8y ago
    I quickly browsed your site, and you don't seem to publish contact details for sellers, so back to Pavel's question: What does the site that scraped your listing do if someone wants to buy a scraped product? Send them to your site?
    - rossmachinery 8y ago
      They seemed to do several things, but click through to our site was not one of them. They capture(ed) visitor data much of which I assume they retain for their purposes.
      - donaltroddyn 8y ago
        Interesting - thanks for your answer.
  - Varcht 8y ago
    Probably there are some differences but there are hundreds of sites doing this to eBay, why haven't they stopped it?
    - edoceo 8y ago
      All the ones I've seen (domain listings) route me to eBay to close the deal, just a nicer/aggregated listing of items for sale across multiple sites
data_spy 8y ago
Were you on the Gary Vee podcast as a 4D's guest? Business sounds familar
- rossmachinery 8y ago
  Nope. Sounds fun.
meritt 8y ago
How was Machinio impacting your business? They appear to act as a metasearch engine and were scraping listings/imagery without permission. As you don't publicize the dealer contact info, presumably buyers still ended up on your site and you were still able to broker the deal? My guess is by acting as a central authority for all used equipment deals (bootstrapped by scraping listings from many sources), they were able to use the existence of the listings to better convince future dealers to just list directly with them instead of your business? e.g. increased exposure for dealers, Machinio doesn't take a commission, so dealers just pay a flat rate to gain exposure? At the end of the day, I have to assume the litigation was over them stealing dealers by disintermediating you? Because otherwise I'm guessing they'd just argue they were providing you free exposure.
aw3c2 8y ago
Isn't copyright implicit, not requiring any kind of notice to "exist"? I don't understand what those website footers matter at all.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > Isn't copyright implicit, not requiring any kind of notice to "exist"? Yes, but notices matter for purposes beyond whether copyright exists, and therefore falsifying, removing, or modifying them also matters. This wasn't about infringement (oddly enough) but about falsified or removed “copyright management information”, specifically the copyright notices. Which seems odd, because if the original notices were valid, then I can't see why actual infringement wasn't alleged. OTOH, if there was no infringement, how could the thing presented been the thing covered by the notices, such that either the removal or falsification claims had substance?
docker_up 8y ago
You really should delete the post and not answer questions because it could inadvertently jeopardize your court case.
- untog 8y ago
  > Happy to answer questions to the extent legal counsel will permit it. They are literally checking with their lawyers about what they can and cannot answer. I think they're OK.
Rjevski 8y ago
Just wondering, if you don't want the information to be public, then why make it public? Put your website behind a login form, after which you can enforce (meaningless) terms of service as well as real technical solutions to prevent abusive scraping like rate limits or captchas. Seems like you're trying to have your cake and eat it too. You're presumably happy for Google to scrape your website (and collect your customers' data for their purposes like ad tracking), but when a smaller site does it you're not happy? Make up your mind.

My company, Alan Ross Machinery, is the plaintiff in this case. Happy to answer questions to the extent legal counsel will permit it. I can tell you the case remains active, stay tuned...

pavel_lishin 8y ago

It seems like y'all are sort of an ebay/craigslist for industrial machinery, right? What benefit does scraping your site give someone else? If someone posts your listings on their site, how do they connect would-be buyers with the sellers, anyway?

rossmachinery 8y ago
Without products to list eBay has no business. So, there's a strong incentive for companies who want to be in the space to acquire listings through a variety of means, including some means they ought not to.
- donaltroddyn 8y ago
  I quickly browsed your site, and you don't seem to publish contact details for sellers, so back to Pavel's question: What does the site that scraped your listing do if someone wants to buy a scraped product? Send them to your site?
  - rossmachinery 8y ago
    They seemed to do several things, but click through to our site was not one of them. They capture(ed) visitor data much of which I assume they retain for their purposes.
    - donaltroddyn 8y ago
      Interesting - thanks for your answer.
- Varcht 8y ago
  Probably there are some differences but there are hundreds of sites doing this to eBay, why haven't they stopped it?
  - edoceo 8y ago
    All the ones I've seen (domain listings) route me to eBay to close the deal, just a nicer/aggregated listing of items for sale across multiple sites

data_spy 8y ago

Were you on the Gary Vee podcast as a 4D's guest? Business sounds familar

rossmachinery 8y ago
Nope. Sounds fun.

meritt 8y ago

How was Machinio impacting your business? They appear to act as a metasearch engine and were scraping listings/imagery without permission. As you don't publicize the dealer contact info, presumably buyers still ended up on your site and you were still able to broker the deal? My guess is by acting as a central authority for all used equipment deals (bootstrapped by scraping listings from many sources), they were able to use the existence of the listings to better convince future dealers to just list directly with them instead of your business? e.g. increased exposure for dealers, Machinio doesn't take a commission, so dealers just pay a flat rate to gain exposure? At the end of the day, I have to assume the litigation was over them stealing dealers by disintermediating you? Because otherwise I'm guessing they'd just argue they were providing you free exposure.

aw3c2 8y ago

Isn't copyright implicit, not requiring any kind of notice to "exist"? I don't understand what those website footers matter at all.

dragonwriter 8y ago
> Isn't copyright implicit, not requiring any kind of notice to "exist"? Yes, but notices matter for purposes beyond whether copyright exists, and therefore falsifying, removing, or modifying them also matters. This wasn't about infringement (oddly enough) but about falsified or removed “copyright management information”, specifically the copyright notices. Which seems odd, because if the original notices were valid, then I can't see why actual infringement wasn't alleged. OTOH, if there was no infringement, how could the thing presented been the thing covered by the notices, such that either the removal or falsification claims had substance?

docker_up 8y ago

You really should delete the post and not answer questions because it could inadvertently jeopardize your court case.

untog 8y ago
> Happy to answer questions to the extent legal counsel will permit it. They are literally checking with their lawyers about what they can and cannot answer. I think they're OK.

Rjevski 8y ago

Just wondering, if you don't want the information to be public, then why make it public? Put your website behind a login form, after which you can enforce (meaningless) terms of service as well as real technical solutions to prevent abusive scraping like rate limits or captchas. Seems like you're trying to have your cake and eat it too. You're presumably happy for Google to scrape your website (and collect your customers' data for their purposes like ad tracking), but when a smaller site does it you're not happy? Make up your mind.