Does XBMC and XBMC Media Center end-users have permission to scrape imdb.com website?

ultrabrutal Wrote:If XBMC does not respect this, then they can shove their GPL up their butts. How can you ask for respect if you give out none yourself?

The GPL is a software license. It is a legally binding document. A TOS is not, unless a user is explicitly required to accept it in order to use the website. If it does, it becomes a license.

License = contract
Terms of use /= contract

Maybe you are right. I have no idea. I'm not a lawyer or judge and whether or not they own the copyright of the data in their database is not up to me to judge. Let's hope you are correct, but I think that the team needs alittle more solid ground inother to reenable the disabled scrapers. Can you provide this? That would be great thanks

Quote:Many web sites make you click on “agree” to the terms and conditions before going on, but Ticketmaster does not. Further, the terms and conditions are set forth so that the customer needs to scroll down the home page to find and read them. Many customers instead are likely to proceed to the event page of interest rather than reading the “small print.” It cannot be said that merely putting the terms and conditions in this fashion necessarily creates a contract with any one using the web site.

Ticketmaster Corp. v. Tickets.Com, Inc., 2000 WL 525390, 3 (C.D.Cal., 2000).

Quote:[A]n offeree, regardless of apparent manifestation of his consent, is not bound by inconspicuous contractual provisions of which he was unaware, contained in a document whose contractual nature is not obvious....

Windsor Mills, Inc. v. Collins & Aikman Corp., 25 Cal.App.3d 987, 993, 101 Cal.Rptr. 347 (Cal.Ct.App.1972).

Quote:Netscape argues that the mere act of downloading indicates assent. However, downloading is hardly an unambiguous indication of assent. The primary purpose of downloading is to obtain a product, not to assent to an agreement. In contrast, clicking on an icon stating “I assent” has no meaning or purpose other than to indicate such assent. Netscape's failure to require users of SmartDownload to indicate assent to its license as a precondition to downloading and using its software is fatal to its argument that a contract has been formed.

Specht v. Netscape Communications Corp., 150 F. Supp. 2d 585, 595 (S.D.N.Y., 2001).

To summarize, users of IMDB are not bound by the terms of usage of the website because they are not required to accept them. I was unable to make the moderators of Mythbuntu forums see this fact when it came to a program to obtain EPG data from Microsoft Media Center servers. The Microsoft TOS for their Media Center data explicitly stated that it could not be accessed with anything other than an authorized Microsoft product, but that does not apply to anyone who does not explicitly accept that TOS/license.

If I had purchased and installed Vista MCE (for example), I would have been required to explicitly accept the terms of the license (click "I Agree" in order to install it). IN that case, the terms would be binding. But as a Linux user I've never accepted Microsoft's TOS and am therefore not bound by them. That means I can access data from Microsoft's EPG servers any way I like and there are no legal ramifications. If Microsoft wants to make their servers inaccessible to anything other than a Microsoft product, it's up to them to do so.

In like manner, if IMDB wants to make its users explicitly agree not to scrape the website or to make the website "unscrapable," it's up to them to do so. In the mean time, as I said, their TOS amounts to nothing more than a request. It's not enough to form a contract and it is not legally binding, even if you HAVE read it and know what it says.

I don't understand why you guys are trying to turn this into a legal entitlement issue. XBMC is an opensource project that depends on the cooperation and willingness of users/devs/affiliates/etc.

XBMC could probably scrape from the imdb site no problem, even if they explicitly forbade it. But that's not the issue. The issue is that they've asked that it not happen without consent. Free access to a huge movie database and all they want is for you to ask... sounds fair to me. If they decline, the community will organize something new.

If too many projects scraped their site they would be forced to block it somehow. They would have every right. Again, it's not an issue of entitlement, it's about being fair and cooperating.

Let's try to be civil and not demanding. I think the XBMC team is doing it just right.

TheUni

I don't think anyone was saying we are legally entitled to IMDB's info and should, therefore, take it as we please. Instead, ultrabrutal made the point that to do so would be "stealing," and people were irritated by that minor inaccuracy, since no one likes to be called a thief. Thus, we engaged in a brief legal discussion on the definition of breach of contract and infringement.

I personally agree that getting the permission of IMDB would be the way to go, since cooperation in this area could lead to improved scraping times, reduced bandwidth usage, and a generally more pleasant experience, or, in the alternative, the improvement of an alternative "open" website for scraping purposes would do the same thing.

With that said, having a frank and open discussion of the state of the law is never a bad thing. If nothing else, many times it's a good way to find out that there are efficient, legal ways to accomplish goals, and, in our current predicament, it's a good way to find out that, even if we do decide to go down a different path in the future, our previous actions were still well within the law and entirely reasonable.

I don't understand the rationale for the stopped distribution of the IMDB scraper. As said, IMDB didn't initiate contact with a cease&desist, it's actually XBMC that asked. What organization in their right mind would say that it's OK to use their content, w/o the benefit of bannering their ads? No one. I'll bet if XBMC starts asking any of the other content sites, most of them would give a thumbs down. Suddenly elevating this to a cease&desist seems overly paranoid and self-defeating to me. Would Apple be happy and give permission to distribute the Apple trailer plugin? May be we should ask them? How about YouTube? How about any of the content orgs that XBMC has a scraper or plugin for?

Let's be clear, as an open-source app that bypasses most "official" (read: DRM'ed or ad-driven) solutions, no company is going to approve of XBMC. If XBMC gets a cease&desist lawyerese form, fine, it should stop distrib the scraper. But otherwise, keep on trucking. At the least, leave the scraper in the distribution, but don't enable it as a default.

Hi Spiff,

I was just wondering when you were going to stop scraping allmusic.com since it's against their TOS to scrape. Their TOS found here states: "You may not scrape or otherwise copy our Material without permission." Likewise, when does XBMC plan to stop allowing access to Hulu content? Their TOS found here states that you may not scrape their site or playback any content outside of the Hulu video player. You sure you want to start down this slippery slope?

Thread closed - it's gone too far off topic.

Like I said before this bongles my head.

It makes no sense why and I'm not even going to get into it.

Everyone use IMDB for that reason.

Example:

MythTV
Meedios
Mediaportal
GBPVR
Sagetv

I can make this list a lot bigger, none them are running around stopping it.

Whatever I'm grumpy today.

I don't think we need to debate the devs decision to remove IMDB (unless they want us to ), but I think that it would be wise to carefully consider the alternatives and make sure there won't be any problems down the line. I think the two prerequisites to consider before you contribute and volunteer your time to any site should be:

1) is the content "free"
and
2) is there a database dump available

This way it is to fork if the site becomes defunct or "evil". I still remember the uproar when CDDB took people's work and became commercial and hopefully we can avoid mistakes like that in the future.

thetvdb.com uses the Creative Commons "Attribution" license, which is perfect. themoviedb.org also uses the Creative Commons licens, but with the "Attribution" and "Non-commercial" clauses. IMHO, the "Non-commercial" clause might be problematic, but is still better than IMDB.