Wired 16.01 has an article entitled The Data Wars by Josh McHugh. A quote from the printed version:
They call it scraping — when web companies automatically harvest information from the likes of Yahoo, Google, and craigslist. Now the Internet establishment is clamping down.
It's a sobering read for those of us who advocate harvesting data from as many sources as possible, more so in light of Microsoft's bid to buy Yahoo. Yahoo provides free access to many of its tools via an API (such as the image search I use in iSpecies, and in this sense is much more open than Google. Might this change under Microsoft...?
Rod, is "harvest information from the lies of Yahoo, Google, and craigslist" a Freudian slip? :)
ReplyDeleteDoh! Fixed now -- bad typing rather than deep seated mistrust ... I think.
ReplyDeleteThis article very much reminds of a recent website called IRSeek (http://www.irseek.com) that have archived public-log chats and made them available on their website.
ReplyDelete