• muntedcrocodile@lemm.ee
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    5 days ago

    Just wait till u find out that food is on average 30% cheaper at aldi in general. Did u know that if u write a bot that pulls all the data from the online stores for woolies/coles/aldi and upload that data in a big comparison table to rhw intent then woolies will send u a cease and desist.

    • Nath@aussie.zone
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      5 days ago

      That’s interesting, is their issue that you scraped their data? If so, then fair enough - that’s technically their intellectual property.

      If you have people going into stores and getting the prices, I don’t believe they’d have a legal leg to stand on.

      • Zagorath@aussie.zone
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        4 days ago

        that’s technically their intellectual property

        No it’s not. You can’t copyright a fact, only its presentation. There might be some laws that they could legitimately use to stop you doing this, but it wouldn’t be copyright.

        • Nath@aussie.zone
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          4 days ago

          But, that’s exactly what they’ve got. Presentation of prices. If you take it from their presentation, I can see their issue. If you send people into stores to gather those facts for yourself, they don’t have a legal leg to stand on.

          What I don’t really understand is why they take issue in the first place. You’re effectively advertising for them on your site.

          • Zagorath@aussie.zone
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            4 days ago

            No, the price is a fact. If the price were included in a paragraph of prose, that prose could be copyrighted. The whole design and layout of their site could maybe be considered creative enough to be copyrighted. But the raw numbers cannot.

            • Nath@aussie.zone
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              3 days ago

              I’m not at all versed in the legalese, perhaps I’m using the wrong term (IP). We are in agreement that they can’t do anything about your site having their prices listed.

              What they probably can do something about is you taking that data from their API or website without authorisation. If it isn’t called Intellectual Property, then let’s call it “Woolies doesn’t like that” law.

              • Zagorath@aussie.zone
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                3 days ago

                There might be something they can do with respect to “unauthorised computer access” laws. I don’t really know much about our laws in that area. But failing that, I can’t imagine there’s anything they can do to get them in legal trouble.

                They could absolutely revoke API keys, though that would not prevent a blunter web scraping tactic.

      • muntedcrocodile@lemm.ee
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        5 days ago

        Allegedly they where complaining about improper use of their api. Btw did u know that their api is very easy to reverse engineer and they issue a new api key as a cookie every time u visit the consumer website.