[mythtv-users] New Australian XMLTV grabber

[Brian May]

>>>>> "Jeremy" == Jeremy Malcolm <Jeremy at Malcolm.id.au> writes:

    Jeremy> There is an implied licence (that is to say, a copyright
    Jeremy> licence) granted by Web site owners for people to surf
    Jeremy> them in the ordinary way. This arguably doesn't extend to
    Jeremy> Web scrapers and the like, unless you have permission from
    Jeremy> the site owner.  It's a grey area.

Ok. I guess there is a fine line between "browsing" and other uses,
because one could be considered an extension of the other...

For example, consider a web cache that downloads web pages in
advance. I think that is considered OK. Then reformat the data so it
is displayed in a different format, you would end up with something
similar to what XMLTV does.

    Jeremy> However arguably the data doesn't qualify as an original
    Jeremy> "literary work" so is incapable of copyright protection,
    Jeremy> or at least not by the Web site owner.  At most, there may
    Jeremy> be copyright in the descriptions, and this may be why the
    Jeremy> D1 service doesn't include them.

Interesting.

hmmm... not sure how well this would work in practise, somebody
recently posted a message to aus.rail saying he had a website with
train time tables posted from around the world. He had to take it
off-line, because he was accused of infringing copyright by the owners
(weird; I thought it would be like free advertising). I would have
this would be a similar situation.

The question the MythTV people are asking is whether it is considered
unfair trading or not for the TV stations to sell TV guides to various
websites, but not to end consumers. The other question is whether or
not ACCC can help.

I have a suspicion the answer to both questions is probably no, as I
think when selling a license you have the right to decide who to sell
or not sell the licence to.

Thanks for your response.
-- 
Brian May <bam at snoopy.apana.org.au>