Sure, my software sends a nice,
simple, vanilla pure, good looking
string for the user agent string.
I agree with you about essentially all
the details of this specific case.
As seemingly hinted in the OP,
my concern is with the more general
situation -- could a Web site use lawyers,
C&D letters, and IP addresses to make
big legal problems for Internet users
who download an unusually large number
of Web pages? I hope not.
Then there's the suggestion that for a
user to get a new IP address is somehow
nefarious -- it's not. And there's
calling getting Web pages screen
scraping as if it is different, unusual,
and nefarious -- it's not. Then there's
the suggestion that what the user did
that was bad was getting the data
when the real problem was that the user
republished the copyrighted data.
I don't think* this case gives any basis for a site to take legal action against someone just based on downloading a large number of web pages or accessing the site with different IP addresses. There has to be quite a bit more than that. I don't think the headline of the article really gets across all of the factors that had to be present for this ruling to go the way it did (but the body of the article does a better job of that).
Sure, my software sends a nice, simple, vanilla pure, good looking string for the user agent string.
I agree with you about essentially all the details of this specific case.
As seemingly hinted in the OP, my concern is with the more general situation -- could a Web site use lawyers, C&D letters, and IP addresses to make big legal problems for Internet users who download an unusually large number of Web pages? I hope not.
Then there's the suggestion that for a user to get a new IP address is somehow nefarious -- it's not. And there's calling getting Web pages screen scraping as if it is different, unusual, and nefarious -- it's not. Then there's the suggestion that what the user did that was bad was getting the data when the real problem was that the user republished the copyrighted data.