Jan 01
Scraping, a questionable practice involving writing code that goes out onto the web and automatically gathers data and content from sites, is getting a rethink in this Wired piece on legitimately accessing other people’s datasources.
This interests us because we’re working on using Amazon’s API, a legitimate access point for affiliates and on using RSS to feed content into portal aggregator sites. As a business rule we don’t engage in theft or ‘blackhat’ tactics- the RSS feeds provide relevant links back to contributing sites and Amazon gets new sales channels. What we’re not sure about are the search implications…