More Glitches in the ATS Matrix

[FlyingClayDisk]

I know the way this forum joins consecutive posts doesn't help, but if you weren't so fixated on your own thoughts and problems you would probably have noticed that the mention of ATS' Terms & Conditions of Use was not directed to you but to l0st's post about the possible legal problems of scrapping ATS' posts. 

Sorry, yes, I may have misread this particular part.  Please forgive my oversight.

BTW...I am not 'fixated' on anything, particularly my own thoughts and problems.  I think my other posts here and elsewhere bear this out with crystal clarity.  The 'problem' (with political discussions) I illustrated is not mine, and it stems from a tone which repeatedly tries to be set here, a tone which is not rooted in open mindedness and discovery, but rather in ignorance and denial of reality.  I know exactly where this tone comes from too, and I've said it before (and will likely say it again); it comes from the (former) moderators of ATS.  It is a devout and resolute stand against political discussions here on Deny Ignorance, and I do not hesitate to call it out whenever I observe it.  My personal belief is this posture stems from fatigue of moderating such a difficult environment; it takes work.  In some ways I somewhat "get it"; a moderator is not a paid position, so it stands to reason that someone might conclude..."I agreed to be a moderator, but I didn't sign up for this!"  Unfortunately though, it goes with the territory.

What you refer to as... 'my own (personal) thoughts and problems'... are really not my own; the World would be a much better place if these were just my own problems and no one else's problems.  The reality though is, these problems are everyone's problem; they are real, and they become larger as each day passes.  Social media has been dominated by echo chambers in every political 'flavor', but seldom does a social media website attempt to navigate a more neutral posture allowing viewpoints from all sides to be expressed.  This is rare indeed.

I would think you personally would agree with my posture on politics more than most.  Portugal, for such a small country population wise, has had tremendous impact on World geopolitics and history.  The Portuguese were some of the greatest explorers in all of history (rivaling even that of the great Italian explorers of antiquity like Christopher Columbus).  The result of these travails has been a centuries long series of political battles over both territory and ideology.  It is a rich history indeed, but one fraught with political struggles across the entire spectrum of politics.  In fact, it still blows my mind that Macau remained a Portuguese territory until 1999, and East Timor remained a Portuguese territory until 2002.  If there's one thing the Portuguese know how to do well and in spades...it's politics.

Fixated?  Perhaps...but not on my 'own' thoughts and problems, but rather the problems of the greater good and the future of mankind.  Seems pretty important to me.  Doesn't it to you?

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Thanks for that. 

If I'm not mistaken, not all pages were saved ​​​​​​by the Wayback Machine, but I will try to change my program's code to save all the pages I can.

PS: on my previous post I said that the Japan thread has 672,665 posts but I was wrong, 672665 is the thread's ID.
I shouldn't post when I'm half asleep. 

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(Next reply)  (I can't always tell when posts and/or replies will be combined)
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Regarding the legalities of 'scraping' content from ATS, my understanding of the law is that the only person or entity who would have any legal claim would be the "owner' of that content, and the only claim they could have would be the "use" of the content interfered with, or infringed upon, their ability to generate revenue from said content.  Because DI is not a profit motivated site, and ATS is also not monetized (i.e. members do not have to pay to be members), it doesn't seem like there would be any valid legal claim.

I think the larger question would be 'how' this content is intended to be used.  I've actually spent a good deal of time contemplating exactly this question, specifically as it relates to ATS data in particular.  There are several possibilities, but the most likely one (in my mind) is to have the content serve as a reference background.  In other words, to have the content available to members such that it could be searched and answers could be found to questions members might have without the need to replicate the original discussion all over again.  This makes sense.  In this regard, any potential claim of infringement becomes even more remote (almost to the point of non-existence) by virtue of the fact that no one would be "re-posting" this same content again; it would only be searched, read, and then closed again.  Therefore, there would be no visual evidence the content even existed...short of being able to search an individual's browser search history (which if it ever comes to that, is a much larger issue).

About the only other possibility I see is a person retrieving their own posting history and related replies to a given subject.  Again though, this is not material which would be "re-posted" here as if it was original content, but rather used by the person for their own private use.  I see no valid legal claim here either.

I don't think it's an issue.  To me, the bigger issue is simply the capture of this data in a coherent fashion.  'Scraping' by its very nature is an imprecise method of data replication, and it winds up capturing all sorts of other extraneous stuff along with it (i.e. things like headers and footers and all sorts of other clutter).  As a result, the 'delimiters' of any such data become difficult at best, so further parsing of the data requires considerable clean up before it can be archived in a coherent way.  This becomes especially true if the intent is to store the data in a retrievable fashion for persons other than the person who performed the capture effort.

That's my take on it.