in reply to Thwarting Screen Scrapers

As Abigail says, so what?

The whole point of the web is open standards. HTML is not hidden. If it was, it would not be as poplular. Now you want to hide so that you can sell your productX better than someone else can sell productY?

A product should sell on the merits of its performance and quality. Not on how slick your website is.

Neil Watson
watson-wilson.ca

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Re: Re: Thwarting Screen Scrapers
by kschwab (Vicar) on Jul 18, 2002 at 14:44 UTC
    That's missing the point. I don't care about honest competition. I just don't think someone should be able to leverage my infrastructure to re-sell my product.

    This leaves me no control over the selling process. The front-end does whatever it likes.

    Suppose they make a claim that the product has awesome feature xyz. They then take the money, hit my website, I take the order and ship it. The customer opens the box, finds out feature xyz doesn't exist, then finds the support contact info in the box. They call me and ask about feature xyz.

    Bah.

    Update neilwatson: Yes, in some cases it is fraud, and legal action is taken. The reason for the post was to find ideas to do whatever I can to discourage it in the first place. I'd rather make it hard to do than wait for it happen and take legal action.

[reply]
      So we are talking about fraud? There's not really a productY at all. It is productX purchased from you, marked up and resold in a fraudulant manner. Surely there is a way for the product to be traced to whom is was sold to (the "scraper")? Product serial numbers?

      Perhaps finding the sites for these "scapers" and bringing legal action against them.

      Neil Watson
      watson-wilson.ca

[reply]

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