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If the api was as basic as you say, can you replace it with some screen scraping on yelp’s site?
by loloquwowndueo 2y ago
If the api was as basic as you say, can you replace it with some screen scraping on yelp’s site?
- SoftTalker 2y agoProbably not without violating other terms of service.
- ycombinatrix 2y agoI don't care about Yelp's terms of service, do you?
- SoftTalker 2y agoYou will when a process server hands you a notice.
- stavros 2y agoA notice of what? It's not illegal to violate someone's random wishlist. It's not like you've signed a contract with them.
- jandrese 2y agoTypically for copyright infringement. They'll sue you for the maximum legal damages possible per copy, multiplied by the number of times your bot loaded a page, probably in the trillions of dollars.
- CuriouslyC 2y agoSo have the bot act on behalf of the user, using workers run on the user's machine. That's fair use.
- phone8675309 2y agoAre you in the habit of releasing software that causes users to violate the ToS of services?
- CuriouslyC 2y agoI'm happy to write code to let users circumvent the restrictions put in place by assholes, as long as it doesn't end up getting them in legal trouble I'm fine with it. If companies like google don't want people to try and screw them over, I suggest they offer an olive branch and stop being unethical jerks.
- qingcharles 2y agoIt is in Illinois. Their Computer Tampering law specifically makes violation of a web sites ToS punishable by up to 5 years in prison. Probably other states have similar.
- stavros 2y agohttps://njal.la/ https://njal.la/ looks interesting.
- SoftTalker 2y agoYelp can afford lawyers who will try to convince a judge otherwise. Can you afford lawyers to argue your case?
- jandrese 2y agoCorporate policy is not the law. If you didn't sign a contract with them they should have no legal power. The DMCA was a mistake.
- SoftTalker 2y agoCoprporations (or other organiztions or individuals) can make things available to the public without completely ceding control over how they are used. Imagine a landowner who allows public access to hikers using defined trails but no overnight camping. That's legal and just has to be posted. If you don't like it, don't use it.
- leros 2y agoHave you seen the results of the hiQ Labs v LinkedIn case? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HiQ_Labs_v._LinkedIn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HiQ_Labs_v._LinkedIn
- dankwizard 2y agoIt's so cute watching people play pretend lawyer on the internet.
- leros 2y agoIt should be ok as long as you do it logged out. SerpAPI is a convenient wrapper API for scraping various sites. I assume they've vetted all the legality of things. They have a YouTube API: https://serpapi.com/yelp-search-api https://serpapi.com/yelp-search-api
- notpushkin 2y ago> I assume they've vetted all the legality of things. They claim they did: https://serpapi.com/blog/scraping-public-pages-legality/ https://serpapi.com/blog/scraping-public-pages-legality/ Still they have a boilerplate ToS with some glaring mistakes: > These Terms of Service and any separate agreements whereby we provide you Services shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of 5540 N Lamar Blvd #12, Austin, TX, 78756, United States. (sic)
- TheDong 2y agoIt's not quite so clear-cut. We even have a historical precedent here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craigslist_Inc._v._3Taps_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craigslist_Inc._v._3Taps_Inc. In that case, the court found 3Taps was criminally guilty for scraping publicly available craigslist data while logged out because 3Taps knew their use was not authorized. This person has just received an email from Yelp telling them their free usage is not authorized, so circumventing that may well be illegal, now that they've been given that sort of communication, even if it might be questionably legal for other serpapi users.
- doh 2y agoThe courts are altering their views on scrapping. This [0] is a good paper that explored the last 20 years of rulings (although it hasn't been updated with the most recent cases). [0] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3221625 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3221625
- JohnMakin 2y agoNot sure why this is getting downvoted, because it's a reasonable question - the answer being that such scraping requires a lot more time and technical expertise to engineer than a simple API call. Also devolves into a cat and mouse game between your application's backend and whatever proxy they put in front of yelp like cloudflare, which you'll probably lose or will be prohibitively expensive.
- cirrus3 2y agoThat would probably as big or bigger project than the entire rest of the app itself, and since it is such a single developer and not a super profitable app it likely makes no sense to do this.
- WoodenChair 2y agoNot only would that violate their terms of service, but the monetary stakes are also too low for it to be worth it to me even if it didn't.