[mythtv] wanted: developers that use mythfilldatabase

Michael T. Dean mtdean at thirdcontact.com
Wed Feb 12 12:42:02 UTC 2020


On 02/11/2020 09:40 AM, Hans Dingemans wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 10, 2020 at 7:44 AM Michael T. Dean wrote:
>> On 02/09/2020 07:57 AM, Hans Dingemans wrote:
>>> I am using zap2xml for US channels
>> FWIW, zap2xml is in violation of Zap2It's Terms of Use and copyright.
>> See https://lists.gt.net/mythtv/users/612021#612021 . Mentioning this,
>> as in the linked post since, due to the program's author's deception,
>> most users have no idea that using that program is in violation of the
>> ToU/copyright.
> Mike, I looked into this, and tvguide.com indeed has a policy that forbids
> you to download their information and store it in a database. But zap2it.com
> does not seem to have an (active) terms of use policy; that is, I couldn't
> find it, and neither could Google.
>
> What is the source of your information?

History.

At the bottom of the page is:

     Contact Us    Copyright 2020 Tribune Media Entertainment Powered by 
Gracenote, Inc.    Privacy Policy

Where the "Gracenote, Inc." is a link to their home page, which includes 
a link to https://www.gracenote.com/terms-of-use/  .  The "Privacy 
Policy" link sends you to http://privacy.tribunemedia.com/ , which has a 
link, "TERMS OF SERVICE" to 
http://www.tribunemedia.com/terms-of-service/ , which gives a 404. This 
all seems to be due to the "Zap2it TV listings are back"/site redesign 
and is indicative that it's not fully complete, yet.

Note that Tribune Media is the owner of the listings used by Schedules 
Direct.  See https://www.schedulesdirect.org/faq , specifically, "What 
about alternatives to licensing data?"   There's also mention of Zap2It 
Labs in "Why are you charging for something that you used to provide for 
free?" where Zap2It Labs was something that Tribune Media set up to 
provide free listings for approved open-source software usage after 
requesting that "we" (XMLTV users) stop screen scraping their site 
because doing so was destroying their servers--almost to the extend of 
DoS'ing them.  Due to changes over the years, they were unable to keep 
Zap2It Labs running, but were able to provide licensed listings to 
Schedules Direct at a reduced licensing rate to allow the community to 
continue to get listings which are paid for by Schedules Direct 
membership fees--which are significantly less expensive ($25/yr or $6 
for 2 months) than those for TiVo and other services (even cable 
companies charge much more for DVR listings fees).  (Oh, and around the 
time they set up Zap2It Labs, they actually added a ToU page to Zap2It's 
TV listings page that forbid bots/scraping/...)

If you search the list archives, you can find many discussions of 
zap2xml and mc2xml all pointing to the fact that they download and copy 
copyrighted listings data compilations and show summaries and such.  
There is an approved/legal/licensed approach to getting that data (and 
much more/better quality data, actually), by using Schedules Direct ( 
https://schedulesdirect.org ).

But don't take my word for it.  Feel free to contact Tribune Media and 
ask them what they think about zap2xml's screen scraping their website 
to make a copy of their copyrighted data using a method that doesn't 
access any of the ads that support their site.  (And after getting an 
answer, you may want to tell them they really need to make their ToS/ToU 
prominent--or at least findable--on their new site.)

Mike


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