[mythtv-users] Our Only Option is Schedule Direct?

[Doug Young]

>
> Mike Perkins <mikep at randomtraveller.org.uk> wrote:
> > Braindead wrote:
> > >
> > > If you download software that scrapes the site, you never agreed to
> > > anything.  How could you, if you never loaded the page?
> > >
> > Pure sophistry. *You* own the computer that contains the software
> > that *you* bought/acquired and *you* ran. Explain that to the judge.
> > You are expected to have some idea of what the software you own does,
> > or is supposed to do, and where it gets it's information from. If you
> > don't, I've a program here called 'Bonzai Buddy' you might like.
>
> You are suggesting that your average user is responsible for breaking some
> agreement with (just one example) the listing service that MCE uses.  What's
> the difference between getting listings in MCE or some other commercial PVR
> application and using a separate application to download listings into
> MythTV? You average user would have no idea what's going on, in fact how the
> schedule 'downloader' works would be beyond most people.
>

This is exactly why discussion of illegal / against-TOS screen scrapers is
not appropriate here, and will not be accepted into the codebase of either
Myth or XMLTV.  In one message you're saying "I never signed anything so I
can't be held responsible", and then you're saying "I just installed it, I
didn't know".  I'd not even qualify the first message as sophistry, as
sophistry requires a level of subtleness that I find lacking.  Rather, I'd
say it's pure incontrovertible BS.  The second, however, is worse.  By
saying "I just installed it, I didn't know", you're passing the
responsibility back to this community.  Think about it: if MCE was found to
be illegally obtaining it's listings, end-users would not be the target of
any lawsuit...MS would.  Likewise with any other PVR you were to buy (Tivo,
Replay TV, etc).  If you bought said appliance on good faith, you have a
reasonable assumption that they acted in good faith and thus you're in the
clear.  Likewise, if you installed MythTV on good faith that we weren't
breaking the law (your argument above), you would have the reasonable
assumption that we have acted on good faith.  Thus, WE MUST ACT ON GOOD
FAITH!

To state again (this has been stated several times since I've been on this
list, which is only been for about a month):

This community does not want to take responsibility for ANY illegal /
against-TOS action which may reflect back on us as a whole.  If you decide
to scrape screens for your listings, feel free, but if it is against said
website's TOS, take discussion of it elsewhere and keep the community at
large out of it.

If you can come up with a legal, within TOS, way to get listings, we'd love
to hear about it.

Wow...I've dodged feeding the trolls so far, but this one really pushed my
buttons for some reason...
-- 
Doug
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