[mythtv-users] Free US/Canada Listings

[David Segall]

Bill Williamson wrote:
> On 9/6/07, *J Douglas* <jdouglas70 at hotmail.com 
> <mailto:jdouglas70 at hotmail.com>> wrote:
> 
>     Hi,
> 
>     Here is a list of free TV listing sites for US/Canada.
> 
>  
>  
> How many of them are legal to scrape?
All of them! If scraping was against any State or Federal law then 
Google would be in jail. Your next question is "Could the site sue me 
for violating their copyright or their terms of service?" The answer is 
possibly yes but the most they could obtain is the negligible amount you 
cost them by scraping. In any case, they would write to you first asking 
you to stop and I suggest you agree because they probably have "free" 
in-house lawyers and you don't.

As others have pointed out the problem arises if you share your scraped 
data. The site may then be able to sue you for the the lost revenue 
because thousands of people missed reading their advertisements. A 
similar problem might arise if you wrote a widely used scraper. If you 
are planning either of these I suggest you host the site or attribute 
authorship in a country where the legislators are not as easily 
corrupted by copyright holders as those in the United States.