Re: Automating Searches
nowwho wrote:
I think you might be well placed to use the 'legal
and free' API's currently offered! Surely even the
small numbers of queries Google offers for free
would cover your requirement?
The use of other peoples code is allowed , however ALL work and ALL
sources of information used in any way required for the project have to
be detailed, we were well warned about the conquences of plagiarism.
All websites accessed for the project along with any copyright date
must be included along with the date that the website was accessed
etc...
Oh what a tangled web we weave...what happened to the days when you
could just tinker and innovate without fear of lawyers or similar? Hmm?
Of course, wholesale copying of other stuff without permission and
misattributing it as your own original work is simply bad, but it's
because it's fraud and misrepresentation, not because it's copying, IMO.
Wheel-reinventing is supposed to be a bad thing. Let some attorneys get
involved and soon everyone is expecting you to get their permission to
copy anything. Then to *use* anything. Then to breathe or take a leak,
no doubt.
I think it's worth pointing out that unless you've signed something in
writing, you aren't in a binding agreement with Google about anything
(or anyone else) and only copyright, trademark, and patent law has any
true legal force. No matter what TOC boilerplate is on whose website.
Hell, they can't even prove that you *read* it, in any meaningful way,
even if your IP retrieved the page one day.
Of course the defacto law in the US isn't so rosy, thanks to a braindead
court system and a legislature that's long since been ritually auctioned
with great fanfare biannually to the highest bidder. I'd suggest a saner
country. Many in Europe and, I think, even Canada actually still have
sane legal systems, standards for when someone's actually entered into a
binding contract, standards of evidence to get subpoenas, warrants, and
judgments, and whatnot. Australia's as bad as the US or worse though. I
wonder how long it is before individuals have to jurisdiction-shop by
travel agent and $500 one-way airfare express just to do ordinary
victimless activities without legal repercussions and $50,000 in bogus
fines for phantom file sharing someone else on the neigborhood's cable
company internet service may or may not actually have done...