Developer Weighs Legal and Ethical Limits of Scraping Public Listings

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After a conference submission was rejected, a developer was urged by reviewers to examine the legal and ethical questions raised by scraping public listings. The developer's own project, Clusterflick, collects film screening data from 488 London venues twice daily without formal agreements, and some sites may not want this. The author argues that facts like showtimes are not ownable, while creative content such as reviews deserves more protection. They suggest that public visibility does not mean consent to every possible reuse, and that uses should align with the context in which data was published. The post also examines UK database rights, referencing the 2004 British Horseracing Board v William Hill ruling, which held that protection covers investment in collecting existing data, not creating it.

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