Re: Legality of search bots
GERI KONSTANTIN <geri_at_virtualadv.com> WROTE:
> I believe that search bot utilities are legal.
TO WHICH JIM REARDON <jim_at_amusive.com> REPLIED:
> Actually, there was a recent ruling that stated bots
> are illegal --
>
> http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/26/0542208&mode=thread
>
> A judge has said that Bidder's Edge could no longer use
> its crawler to gather information from eBay. 'Even if
> its searches use only a small amount of eBay's
> computer system capacity, Bidder's Edge has nonetheless
> deprived eBay of the ability to use that portion of
> its personal property for its own purposes.'
I am not an attorney, but I feel confident in saying
this case in no way sets a precedent for delcaring
search bots to be illegal. Bidder's Edge was treated
as a trespasser, and the decision actually vindicates
the long-held position among system administrators
that all servers on the Internet are private property
(unless they are owned by government or
government-funded institutions which are regarded as
public trusts).
The argument brought against Bidder's Edge was that
they had been told to stop deep-indexing eBay's server
and Bidder's Edge refused to do so. The judge
therefore treated the behavior of the bot as if it were
trespassing on real property.
\\ // Science Fiction and Fantasy info_at_xenite.org
\\// Liv Tyler is Arwen. Old news, New site with RealAudio!
//\\ http://www.xenite.org/tolkien/movie/liv-tyler-is-arwen.html
// \\ENITE.org......................................................
Received on Thu Jun 01 2000 - 02:14:45 CDT
