91–100 of 132 posts
I think of web scraping as nothing less than automation of human work. There really is no hacking or unauthorized access involved. It's either me, using a browser, to read something publicly accessible on the internet, or it's my computer, which I've programmed to read those things for me, so I can focus on creative work or spend time with friends and family. This applies not only to personal life, but businesses as…
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It's not up to me or anyone consuming content to help with figuring out the right way to pay for it. What is up to me is the choice to not be potentially exposed to malware any time I go to read the news. While you may have a point, that point just doesn't matter within the context that we're talking about. Making companies money is not my responsibility.
It absolutely is your responsibility if you are consuming the content. Consuming the content means agreeing to the premise that the content is paid for using ads. If you disagree with said premise you may happily browse another website. Malware is already illegal to install and you are free to sue the website for damages. I don't like ads either but trying to justify that their should be a choice of browsing a websit…
I don't particularly have a problem with scraping, but I could really do without whoever keeps trying to scrape lots of pages very quickly from hundreds of IPs and random user agents.
The few times I've written scrapers, one of the things I've done is put contact information in the user-agent so that if there is an issue, the site admins can reach out. So far that's worked out ok for me.
Okay, now is a good time to put my long-time idea on paper: we need a "cloud" power of attorney (not using the term digital so that people don't confuse it for a regular one just signed digitally). Key idea is this: access to internet and its services is essential (and at the web scale, so is automation), but bot abuse is real. It should be possible for any company to ban bots but then for a person with a account on…
That's basically what API keys are, aren't they?
I really thought Obama Admin's data.gov initiative signaled a sea change.
Share your data. Show your work.
Science, journalism, others, face this same crisis. Legitimacy, credibility, authenticity, accountability, etc.
It's this obvious? Why are we still talking about it?
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> I think of web scraping as nothing less than automation of human work. I agree that scraping should be allowed. We wouldn't have Google otherwise. However, there's something to be said for the fact that some activities are okay at a small scale but become problematic at a large scale—particularly the scale which becomes possible when a task is automated. For instance, I recently bought an expensive camera and have…
Can the case be made that recording in public is a right (as if always should be) but trying to track where everyone is at every point of time is stalking at a mass scale which should be illegal as stalking on a one to one scale is illegal? For reference this is what one site (findlaw) has given as what constitutes the crime of stalking: The crime of stalking can be simply described as the unwanted pursuit of another…
Sure the information is free. But to find my property records, phone number, and "aggregate them" like Spokeo, fastpeoplefinder and similar sites, is akin to digital stalking IMO