Re: [Xmltv-devel] concern about grabber overload

[Jerry V. <je...@ma...>]

--On Thursday, January 10, 2002 09:28:58 +0000 Edward Avis wrote:

> On Wed, 9 Jan 2002, Robert Eden wrote:
>
>> I'm very close to releasing a new TVCHECK
>
>> I've been thinking of announcing it on some ReplayTV forums I
>> participate in.  I expect a very nice response.
>>
>> That scares me...... we want folks to use our code, but I don't want
>> the listing sites to shut us down.  I'm afraid if they get hit with a
>> large volume of grabbers we'll show up on their radar (assuming they
>> would care), and they'll either ask the grabbers to stop or change
>> their code.
>

This is a problem, but for instance when I visit the zap2it site
I don't normally use the 'customize' option, I just provide my
postal code, choose the provider and look at the listings. There
has to be a certain amount of traffic that does this, certainly
they're expecting a bunch of traffic from one-only visitors. My
point is that this kinda access is exactly what getlistings_na
simulates. So appart from the 'browser' info in the http header
and the fact we don't download the banner ads and images, they
may not notice the usage.

They can certainly do things that cause us grief. They can
download the code and muck with the slightest of details in
the HTML and screw up anything they want. The other side of the
coin is that zap2it provides tv listings for quite a few major
newspapers like the 'nytimes' among many others, so the usage
could be SO big that they don't care one bit about us. What
can we be ? 0.00001% of the users ? When we get to 0.1% we
could worry.

> There's no point writing code which nobody will use.  If you think the
> code is mature enough for general use or beta-testing, go ahead and
> annouce it.
>
True, we kinda want people to use it.
>
[0.4.2 release]
>

jerry