3 ms·

This violates Coursera's terms of service. The relevant language: "...as a condition of accessing the Sites, you agree not to...(c) use any high-volume, automa

by ambler0 13y ago

This violates Coursera's terms of service. The relevant language: "...as a condition of accessing the Sites, you agree not to...(c) use any high-volume, automated or electronic means to access the Sites (including without limitation, robots, spiders, scripts or web-scraping tools)" https://www.coursera.org/about/terms https://www.coursera.org/about/terms I was actually going to write such a script myself as an exercise (I'm new to programming), but this language dissuaded me. EDIT: Could someone please explain to me why this simple statement of fact would be downvoted?

idm 13y ago
This script would appear to be at odds with the language of that clause, but I wonder if it is truly against the spirit of Coursera. I can see clear ways to automatically exploit the website for the purpose of scraping their content. However, I have had a legitimate use for this in the past and, instead of just doing the smart automatic thing, I did it manually. My take is this: for personal use, a low-volume, automated tool would not violate the spirit of online education. The presence of that clause is probably intended to protect against exploitative uses.
- ambler0 13y ago
  I had a similar take, especially since we all know that terms of service are written very broadly. But on the other hand, I would really hate to mess up my Coursera account. After posting my initial comment, I saw further down that HN user pamelafox is a former Coursera employee. I would love to know whether she or anyone else has insight into how Coursera views tools like this.
carlosgg 13y ago
I upvoted it. :) Good catch! I did not know that! I really hope they mean that clause for people that would try to frivolously download 200 courses or something, just to have them...I figure that would tax their servers and cost money because of the bandwidth being consumed. Before I knew about coursera-dl, I tried to download one of the courses by hand, and it's BEYOND TEDIOUS. So far, I have downloaded 2 courses with coursera-dl, both of which I have taken and submitted lots of homework to. I think it's ok in that case...

by ambler0 13y ago

idm 13y ago

This script would appear to be at odds with the language of that clause, but I wonder if it is truly against the spirit of Coursera. I can see clear ways to automatically exploit the website for the purpose of scraping their content. However, I have had a legitimate use for this in the past and, instead of just doing the smart automatic thing, I did it manually. My take is this: for personal use, a low-volume, automated tool would not violate the spirit of online education. The presence of that clause is probably intended to protect against exploitative uses.

ambler0 13y ago
I had a similar take, especially since we all know that terms of service are written very broadly. But on the other hand, I would really hate to mess up my Coursera account. After posting my initial comment, I saw further down that HN user pamelafox is a former Coursera employee. I would love to know whether she or anyone else has insight into how Coursera views tools like this.

carlosgg 13y ago

I upvoted it. :) Good catch! I did not know that! I really hope they mean that clause for people that would try to frivolously download 200 courses or something, just to have them...I figure that would tax their servers and cost money because of the bandwidth being consumed. Before I knew about coursera-dl, I tried to download one of the courses by hand, and it's BEYOND TEDIOUS. So far, I have downloaded 2 courses with coursera-dl, both of which I have taken and submitted lots of homework to. I think it's ok in that case...