Re: Services_IMDB ??

Hi All, On 5/19/07, Helgi Þormar <helgith@gmail.com> wrote:

On 5/19/07, Philippe Jausions <Philippe.Jausions@11abacus.com> wrote: Helgi Þormar wrote:

On 5/19/07, *Philippe Jausions* <Philippe.Jausions@11abacus.com <mailto:Philippe.Jausions@11abacus.com >> wrote:

    IMO that'd make it a big NO. Unless IMDB comes up with its own web
    service API with associated Terms & Conditions (which I haven't
    look if
    they do) I don't see that package as a good candidate for PEAR.

I've heard it's in the pipeline but well, might just be gossip

It might very well be true, given that IMDb is now an Amazon company, and they push a lot of WS APIs

    Anyway, screen scrappers are usually a nightmare to maintain and

prone

    to breaking easily.

    I don't think PEAR should host "enabler" packages, and obviously

using

    such a package require the user to break the T's & C's.

Well they are breaking the T&C if they don't get a written permission, that's all.

True, but in that case the package may need to require some kind of license ID/reference # from IMDb to create an instance, not that it would actually do anything in the code, but it would remind the end user that the package needs an extra step before being used. Legal stuff are always a PITA. In any case, might be better to wait for Amazon's to deliver the API first. (which reminds me I still have a Services_Alexa proposal in the pipeline that needs attending ;-)

Although I agree that maintaining this package would definitely require updates from time to time, IMDB does not change their layout really often and I would be happy to supply solid error handling and quick fixes when they do. And I really think that a lot of programmers would appreciate this feature. It is the legal/ethic stuff however that I'm just not sure about, and fair enough; if this is the general consensus, I can totally understand that so I'm postponing my work on this project. Thanks for all of your input, when I've got a less controversial idea maybe I'll try again ;) Chiao, Kevin van Zonneveld Work | http://www.true.nl/ About | http://kevin.vanzonneveld.net/ Project | http://www.tabsource.org/