guide data/tv schedule website idea
hmm here's a crazy idea, how about we make a tv schedule website??
...rambling
I say this because I think we need to seriously rethink how we work with guide data. Even with sat extraction the guide data isn't that great, ie missing alot of season info, movie info etc, the kind of information that could be extracted from IMDB and TVTome for example.
Now we can automate that into the sat grab but you've still got a couple of problems, eg reliability + legality. No offense to Jaidev because he's pretty committed (except this week of all weeks, doh!) but even still, having some basic guide data to fall back on would be awesome.
Considering that most of what I (u 2?) record is season stuff or movies then it's probably not that difficult. I've been thinking of a website whereby people could (visually) see a guide data schedule (much akin to sky's site although ideally alot better) and make changes to it (password protected/moderated, etc). eg incorporating season information, genre's, etc.
The biggest critique here is that the user base is to0 small,however I disagree, (1) you can extrapolate alot of information from past data, eg season programs and (2) you can gather (layer?) the information from existing sources eg saturn, tvnz, sky, etc. and (3) you can offer the format in xmltv as well to encourage mythtv,freevo users to participate.
...dreaming
It'd be real nice to have layers of data on top of time blocks. eg tv1 6:00-7:00. so for example u could (optionally) have saturn's data as one layer, sky's data as another, user entered data as another, etc. the top layer (which would be the data to be exported) would be a combination of these layers based on various rules and conditions. ie do we have this data from this source, has it been verified, is this the last episode in the season, etc etc.
The idea situation would be to have it entirely user driven, that would be legal then (a point to argue with some of you here I am sure!!).
I know Bruce Simpson (aardvark.co.nz) is thinking something along these lines for an xml tv schedule (probably alot simpler in concept tho), he has mentioned it briefly on his site but knowing him he'll be months or years before he gets it complete.
just ideas, constructive criticism and ideas please ;)
Copyright law to consider
Quote:
Originally Posted by ehintz
I guess it comes down to the laws; I don't know what they are here. Back in the States they would probably put some crap encoding in and then make it a DMCA violation (circumvention device), in which case most programmers would not want to play whack-a-mole (as the mole) with Sky. I kinda think that if Sky's gonna get ugly, they'll get ugly on an OS project and the members just as quick as if it's just 1-2 folks getting data. Maybe if it was hosted on sourceforge and sufficiently annonymized or something it would work. But again I'm still pretty ignorant of NZ laws so I'd be happy to defer to someone with an actual clue in that department... ;)
We don't have a DMCA (yet), but the existing copyright laws are hopelessly out of date (although a digital age update to the Copyright Act is coming this year we're told).
Because of the lack of recent updated laws, the existing precedents are used by the courts to determine copyright issues and I think you'll find that the rights in this area are pretty much all in Skys camp.
For instance, Sky could apply for a "ex-parte" (without prior notice) "interim injunction" against Tim, you me and everyone else who hangs out at his website, or who has a Tivo prohibiting us from touching their program listing info in anyway.
Then we could argue it court, but that would take 3-7 years as its a "civil matter" and/or it could cost us megadollars to try and get the injunction overturned. You could well be living back in the US before that got decided in court!
Secondly, they could apply [in extreme circumstances admittedly, but it has happened] for a "Anton Pillar order" which is a Search & Seisure order from the court, and this is carried out by the court in conjunction with their lawyers, not the Police [which is even more worrying actually].
Such an order could permit them (amoung other things) to seize every Tivo, computer and anything else possibly related to them you have in your house, your ISP or whatever - whether or not it had any Sky Program Guide data on it. Having all this hosted outside the US is good first step to protect against this sort of thing, but it only goes so far as at the end of the day you and your Tivos will be in NZ and thats the bits that can be subjected to NZ Copyright Law.
Basically, the guts of this are - let sleeping dogs lie - i.e. don't piss them off to such an extent that they (over) react against you.
Partial Solution to web scrapping
Whilst I now think the idea of a website to enter data is a good way forward (it gives information such as seasons that are unavilable elsewhere), if people want to persure the scrapping idea, there is an easy way to do it totally anonymously using GPRS on Vodafone. Plus scrapping COULD be used as a basis for the website programming.
Because Vodafone become an ISP when using GPRS and prepay involves no disclosure of personal information, you can connect to the 'net without ANY identifying information being available, and then to can scrape away, the IP address is dynmanic as well so unless Sky block the whole address range Vodafone use, it is an idea going forward.