Cocoaheads Ireland and Northern Ireland
Legal risks around scraping websites
Just after seeing that Fusio's DublinBikes app just got removed after threat of legal action
Scraping websites is obviously brings this risk with it and I'd guess that legal action (or at least threats) are more likely if you're:
Now DublinBikes app would appear to fall squarely into the infringing territory. The colour scheme matches the dublinbikes.ie site and to most people it does look like an 'official' app.
Now if JC Decaux were a bit more enlightened they might have worked with fusio either to transfer the app to them or to continue building it. That would have allowed them to retain a bit of goodwill and momentum around the app.
What have people done to try to lessen the chances of being threatened with legal action?
kevin
Due to the threat of legal action from J.C. Decaux the Dublin Bikes iPhone App is no longer available to download and there will be no further updates posted. Thank you for all the positive feedback and comments
Scraping websites is obviously brings this risk with it and I'd guess that legal action (or at least threats) are more likely if you're:
- Charging for your app
- Infringing on the website owners trademarks
Now DublinBikes app would appear to fall squarely into the infringing territory. The colour scheme matches the dublinbikes.ie site and to most people it does look like an 'official' app.
Now if JC Decaux were a bit more enlightened they might have worked with fusio either to transfer the app to them or to continue building it. That would have allowed them to retain a bit of goodwill and momentum around the app.
What have people done to try to lessen the chances of being threatened with legal action?
kevin
Tags: apps, legal, scraping, threats
Views: 34
Replies to This Discussion
-
Permalink Reply by Finbarr Brady on -
Good question John K and one that I've always wondered about. In my mind, apps like these are basically specialised & stripped down web browsers which only query certain URL's which are hardcoded in the app.
Why doesn't Dublin Bikes sue Firefox?? Or why doesn't Facebook and Twitter both sue the Flock web browser????
-
Permalink Reply by Kevin O'Regan on -
John Kennedy said:Is it actually legal for the information hosting sites to have terms and conditions preventing web-scraping?
Probably not but large companies like J C Decaux count on being able to threaten legal action against developers etc that can't possibly afford to fight it to get a definitive answer.
They don't fare too well when they try taking the likes of Google on.
My personal opinion is that this is about control. If there's going to be a Dublin Bikes app it'll be from J C Decaux (and it'll probably have ads!).
-
Permalink Reply by Denis Hennessy on -
Interesting analysis of the JCDecaux foot-shooting: http://www.digitalrights.ie/2009/09/25/jc-decaux-should-backpedal/
One big take-away from all this is that it's really a good idea to avoid doing the scraping from the iPhone app itself. By hosting your own server, and using that to provide the data from the app, you get a number of benefits:
1. Your app can be more responsive (because the data is in a more compact form and is cached).
2. You can easily respond to format changes (without updating your app).
3. In the event of some legal bollix, you can get the data from somewhere else (perhaps another website like dublinbikes.mobi or an RSS feed or even by asking your users to confirm the number of bikes available when they pass.
© 2013 Created by Matt Johnston.
Powered by
