I think the key question is whether the automated actions resulted in information being retained by Pebble. If it was just going through a motion and pulling some data (or pulling all data but only keeping some of it), then that would be consistent with Eric's story and not be the kind of scraping that Rebble is worried about. They're worried about the content being archived somewhere else, and they seem to think that happened. But did it?

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fphhotchips 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

One thing I'm confused about in this whole thing is what makes Rebble think they have a right to the data in the first place? They scraped it! "We don't like you scraping the data we scraped" doesn't hold water for me, whether Eric retained it or not.

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apparent 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Yeah, they definitely started by scraping. Apparently 500 of the 13,500 apps were submitted post-Pebble, and Rebble also apparently did a bunch of other upgrades over time.

But you're right that there's some hypocrisy here, given their roots, and they don't really acknowledge that.

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ryandrake 3 hours ago | parent [-]

I think the whole conversation shows how ridiculous it is to be worried so much about who's "scraping" what. The open web is designed to be public and permissive. If you don't want someone accessing "your" content, then don't serve it to the public. And if you do decide to serve to the public, don't complain when someone accesses that data in a way you don't like. The Internet would be so much better without all these people obsessed about how their bits were being accessed and about whether X counts as "scraping" or Y counts as "scraping." Good grief, people! Find something else to worry about.

	▲	apparent 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Perhaps in general, but in this case it seems like they did have an agreement not to scrape, which overrides the general scrape-at-will ethos that you're describing.

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Brian_K_White an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Pebble threw it away, Rebble did not, and Core is a newcomer whith no right to anything.

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AlotOfReading 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It might not be the kind of scraping rebble is worried about, but a bunch of requests to extract data into another form is very plainly scraping and the contract doesn't differentiate based on intent or whether the process is entirely automated. The entire contract is similarly loose and informal, which contributes to these sorts of misunderstandings.

The most reasonable solution would have been for Eric to send an email first, but few contract disputes start with everyone doing the most reasonable thing.

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3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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