IMDb is actually the only site of all the plug-ins that DVDpedia uses that has an explicit statement on its website prohibiting the use of the sites' information in 'scraping'. So the Delicious Library statement is partly true. However, we believe DVDpedia's use of the IMDb site could be constituted as 'fair use'.
Fair use is based on four factors: purpose and character, nature, amount and substantiality, and effect. (For a more detailed outline of these, have a look at
Wikipedia.)
- the purpose and character of the use is personal, that of our users.
- the nature of the work is facts; those cannot be copyrighted. We do not gather the summary which would clearly be a copyright infringement.
- We only gather a small portion of the information.
- We do not compete with IMDb.
We're also providing links back to the IMDb site, which is beneficial to IMDb.
Of course these factors vary depending on how they are interpreted and applied, and we would certainly remove the IMDb plug-in if asked by IMDb to do so. We do not have the money, ambition or understanding of international law to go to court.
With all that said, we are in the process of an update to DVDpedia. This will bring more flexibility and more information from Amazon along with a Links section where IMDb links can be added without any ambiguity as to copyright. IMDb does not forbid linking to their page, on the contrary, they welcome it. We believe that this new system will actually enhance the program as you will have access to all the IMDb information straight from IMDb with just one click, not just the limited portion of information we gather now.
Thanks for bringing this issue up - I am sure many of our users are aware of all the discussions happening on the Internet and in other media regarding copyright, fair use, linking and scraping. (Google Print being one of the latest major issue.)
