I want to write a few words about database scraping and Terms of Service agreements.
Wired Magazine did a feature Valentine’s day story on a guy who joined the OKCupid dating site, but didn’t like/have faith in the way that the OKCupid algorithms worked. So,
against the Terms of Service agreement, that he had signed when joining the site, he scraped the database and put in his own perimeters and worked out his own algorithm and his own dates. Apparently this worked out for him. This article can be found here:
How a Math Genius Hacked OKCupid to Find True Love, if you wish to read it. Even though it was against terms of service apparently OKCupid did not sue him. Perhaps it was too much of a pain. Perhaps the attendant positive publicity with the article (and any negative publicity that would have come with suing the guy) made it okay.
In other words, the decision to sue or not to sue rests with the database provider. Suing people is a pain and expensive. And contentious. Also, Terms of Service agreements don’t always hold up in court. Linden Labs’s own Terms of Service agreement has been tested in court and failed to hold up.
Another story: Last year, my family had massive water damage in our kitchen and we had to completely gut it and remodel. We picked a paint color, tested swatches, had it completely painted on the walls and my husband and I looked at each other and both said “It’s too green.” We tried more swatches but the lighting from windows was such that colors that looked nicely gold on one wall looked orange on another. So we tried a different approach using RGB numbers. My husband, who programs databases (yep he does), scraped all the names, id numbers, and RGB values for yellows and golds of every major paint company in America. We proceeded to pick our color by upping the Reds number, and lowering the Greens number, and making sure that the blues were just right to keep the color from going too bright. We were thrilled with the ultimate result. What we did was unconventional, but it was
not against Terms of Service. All the American paint companies deliberately keep open databases on their color systems which can be accessed by anybody but in particular are meant to be accessed by the hardware stores and major suppliers like Home Depot, that mix the paint. That industry has decided that the paint formula for the liquid itself is proprietary, but the color data (RGB) is not. And so any of you can actually walk into any paint store in the USA with a color name (and it helps if you have the id#) and they can mix you a can. Do they expect customers to do what we did? No. Was it fine? Yes.
KittyCats is a model of professionalism in Second Life. And yet, most businesses don’t really do some things until they’re forced to by circumstance. We do not sign Terms of Service agreements when we buy cats or kibble. That would be like signing a Terms of Service for buying a Diet Pepsi. But it is entirely reasonable for KittyCats to ask 3rd Party Developers using its database to sign such agreements. Such agreements could have a conduct and morals clause in it. Such a clause might well be unenforceable but it is still perfectly plausible and it could be there. The issue then is, having such a ToS, would KittyCats enforce it, legally. Which is an expensive pain and a half.
In the current situation, Rene Marseille has turned his profilers off and turned them back on. Turning them back on does not imply that he has come to any rapport with KittyCats.
I think the profilers are a fabulous tool. I have publicly thanked Rene for making them before. I will thank him again.
But I am deeply disturbed by the way this situation has run and don’t like the idea of a rogue 3rd party developer.
I would feel much better if I knew that 3rd party developers using the database had signed a Terms of Service agreement. Failing the signing of such an agreement, and maybe even with such an agreement having been signed, I think it might be better for KittyCats to create their own teleporting location service for traits.