4 ms·

Why is that hilarious? We developed an entire community, infrastructure, system, architecture, everything, from scratch, and provide access to something that n

Why is that hilarious? We developed an entire community, infrastructure, system, architecture, everything, from scratch, and provide access to something that never existed in the first place on the Internet. That's a significant key difference here. This would be analogous to you thinking ancestory.com is "aptly hilarious" for arguing against someone just scraping their site for content. What makes you think you should be entitled to drive by the very unique house that we built, and pointing right at that house and saying "I think I'll take that all of that for myself!"

hipadev23 2y ago
Because you fail to see the very obvious parallels to scraping. I’m not criticizing your business (I think you provide a valuable service) but your hypocritical stance on what forms of publicly available information are allowed to be gathered and repackaged. Google’s original (and OpenAI’s) business model was also building a scraping infrastructure, system, and architecture, from scratch — and providing access to something that never existed in the first place.
- blantonl 2y ago
  It's completely perpendicular, not parallel. Public safety communications are radio waves that are broadcasted and the ability to passively monitor them is enshrined in United States law. That is a massively key difference. If I was sending data into your home from my infrastructure without any action from you whatsoever, and you were reaching up into the air and gathering it and repackaging it, AND the law said that I have no intellectual property rights to said data, then that's a whole different story.
  - zarzavat 2y ago
    Every time you use Google you benefit from scraping. Scraping is how the world works for the last 25+ years. You are trying to draw a distinction between data that is pushed and data that is pulled, and maybe there is some economic argument there in terms of resource usage, but that is very context-dependent. In UK listening to public radio broadcasts is illegal. I think this law is idiotic and ignore it. It seems you do too since there appear to be streams from UK on your site :)
    - theamk 2y ago
      Google benefits from legal scraping - ban them from robots.txt and they'll stop. Please don't mix consensual and non-consensual scraping, the difference is huge.
  - edgyquant 2y ago
    You are scraping radio signals and selling it. It’s an exact parallel and if you fail to see this it is indeed hilarious.
    - throwaway48476 2y ago
      It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.
    - blantonl 2y ago
      [flagged]
      - papichulo2023 2y ago
        So you only point that scrapping data is bad because the cost? How do you know that the site someone is scraping doesnt have fixed cost?
        theamk 2y ago
        no, scraping data is bad because this is against owners wishes. In US, if you broadcast, the by law you consent to be received and recorded. If you scrape data, there is no such law. And if you get consent (say by finding the permissive robots.txt), then go ahead and scrape.
        sangnoir 2y ago
        > no, scraping data is bad because this is against owners wishes The broadcasters weren't happy about home cassette recording either, and the case went all the way up to the supreme court. If I can legally record cable, then it's nit a stretch to say I can also "record" what's on the public Internet for my own use. Morally speaking, we have to consider the other side of the equation - operator may not be happy about being scraped, but as a user, is it okay for me to build or use a scraper-based price-comparison or price-tracking platform? I'd say yes, even though most sellers wouldn't want to have this data scraped.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - CaptainFever 2y ago
    You realise web scraping is a legal right too?
rmbyrro 2y ago
Why is it ethical if you build upon other people's data, but unethical if others do it? Nobody cares how valuable you think your service is. Who's the judge of what's entitled to scrape or not? If you think you're the judge, I find it somewhat arrogant. It is even more hilarious that you defend a position that, to me, looks authoritarian and individualistic. Might not be your intention, but it's what I read.
- blantonl 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - philipwhiuk 2y ago
    > Because they GAVE IT TO ME, that's why. You gave it them when they visited you.
  - anigbrowl 2y ago
    They gave you a right to resell their broadcast content?
    - theamk 2y ago
      yes, US goverment did Please read other thread replies.
  - rmbyrro 2y ago
    Look, when you publicize information that is not a human creation or art, you are GIVING IT TO THE PUBLIC. The berne convention intentionally left out database sui generis rights outside the scope of copyright. Only in the European Union you have the kind of protection you're looking for. And even in the EU, I've never came across a case where the law was enforced in courts. Maybe because it's a ridiculous right, in my opinion, that would make information flow disfuncional in society.

hipadev23 2y ago

Because you fail to see the very obvious parallels to scraping. I’m not criticizing your business (I think you provide a valuable service) but your hypocritical stance on what forms of publicly available information are allowed to be gathered and repackaged. Google’s original (and OpenAI’s) business model was also building a scraping infrastructure, system, and architecture, from scratch — and providing access to something that never existed in the first place.

blantonl 2y ago
It's completely perpendicular, not parallel. Public safety communications are radio waves that are broadcasted and the ability to passively monitor them is enshrined in United States law. That is a massively key difference. If I was sending data into your home from my infrastructure without any action from you whatsoever, and you were reaching up into the air and gathering it and repackaging it, AND the law said that I have no intellectual property rights to said data, then that's a whole different story.
- zarzavat 2y ago
  Every time you use Google you benefit from scraping. Scraping is how the world works for the last 25+ years. You are trying to draw a distinction between data that is pushed and data that is pulled, and maybe there is some economic argument there in terms of resource usage, but that is very context-dependent. In UK listening to public radio broadcasts is illegal. I think this law is idiotic and ignore it. It seems you do too since there appear to be streams from UK on your site :)
  - theamk 2y ago
    Google benefits from legal scraping - ban them from robots.txt and they'll stop. Please don't mix consensual and non-consensual scraping, the difference is huge.
- edgyquant 2y ago
  You are scraping radio signals and selling it. It’s an exact parallel and if you fail to see this it is indeed hilarious.
  - throwaway48476 2y ago
    It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.
  - blantonl 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - papichulo2023 2y ago
      So you only point that scrapping data is bad because the cost? How do you know that the site someone is scraping doesnt have fixed cost?
      - theamk 2y ago
        no, scraping data is bad because this is against owners wishes. In US, if you broadcast, the by law you consent to be received and recorded. If you scrape data, there is no such law. And if you get consent (say by finding the permissive robots.txt), then go ahead and scrape.
        sangnoir 2y ago
        > no, scraping data is bad because this is against owners wishes The broadcasters weren't happy about home cassette recording either, and the case went all the way up to the supreme court. If I can legally record cable, then it's nit a stretch to say I can also "record" what's on the public Internet for my own use. Morally speaking, we have to consider the other side of the equation - operator may not be happy about being scraped, but as a user, is it okay for me to build or use a scraper-based price-comparison or price-tracking platform? I'd say yes, even though most sellers wouldn't want to have this data scraped.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- CaptainFever 2y ago
  You realise web scraping is a legal right too?

rmbyrro 2y ago

Why is it ethical if you build upon other people's data, but unethical if others do it? Nobody cares how valuable you think your service is. Who's the judge of what's entitled to scrape or not? If you think you're the judge, I find it somewhat arrogant. It is even more hilarious that you defend a position that, to me, looks authoritarian and individualistic. Might not be your intention, but it's what I read.

blantonl 2y ago
[flagged]
- philipwhiuk 2y ago
  > Because they GAVE IT TO ME, that's why. You gave it them when they visited you.
- anigbrowl 2y ago
  They gave you a right to resell their broadcast content?
  - theamk 2y ago
    yes, US goverment did Please read other thread replies.
- rmbyrro 2y ago
  Look, when you publicize information that is not a human creation or art, you are GIVING IT TO THE PUBLIC. The berne convention intentionally left out database sui generis rights outside the scope of copyright. Only in the European Union you have the kind of protection you're looking for. And even in the EU, I've never came across a case where the law was enforced in courts. Maybe because it's a ridiculous right, in my opinion, that would make information flow disfuncional in society.