this post was submitted on 23 Jan 2024
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I fucked with the title a bit. What i linked to was actually a mastodon post linking to an actual thing. but in my defense, i found it because cory doctorow boosted it, so, in a way, i am providing the original source here.

please argue. please do not remove.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago (13 children)

Every web request costs someone money. If you aren't paying them you are being provided a service. They've given you knowledge/ material in their possession free of charge. You are taking advantage of that good will by using the content for purposes not intended. That is a moral failing.

To be clear the ownership of the material is not important, just the access is immoral, as the harm is already done.

Ill add the caveat that it can be moral if they've specifically told you you can via the websites robot.txt file which websites of consequence all have. But the assumption has to be they don't intend this because that is how consent works.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (3 children)

You are taking advantage of that good will by using the content for purposes not intended. That is a moral failing.

only if there were so e sort of agreement about what the acceptable uses are and what is not acceptable.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (2 children)

That's exactly what robot.txt is... they spell out that they don't want you to access this site with an automated system.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

right. so hiring 50 college kids to manually visit every page and cache it for study is fine.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

That would probably be more expensive than just paying companies. But it is morally different because a human did visit their website so their good will was not violated as they expressed this consent when they published the website.

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