I've got a Terms of Service question. For studying gameplay, I would like to collect the logs from tables of my favorite game (about 5000 logs). I could do this in a my spare time in a month or so, but it would be easier to run a crawler.
I have read the that the replay pages are resource intensive to serve (and get blocked if you view too many), but I don't need those. I have in mind to go to pages like /gamereview?table=XXXXXX and save the text logs. These pages are not disallowed by /robots.txt, so it seems like crawling should be allowed.
However, depending on how you read the Terms of Service, crawling may be totally disallowed:
"[Users agree] not to obtain information about Users and the Content they publish using automated methods (such as robots, spiders, etc.); not to use the Services and/or the BGA Sites using automated methods (such as robots, spiders, multiple queries, etc.)."
Are game logs "user-created content"? Does "use the services" include just loading pages?
If I use a human-like delay between page requests, say 10 seconds, would it be acceptable to have a crawler gather these logs? I'd prefer an authoritative answer, but I'm also happy to hear experienced speculation.
I have read the that the replay pages are resource intensive to serve (and get blocked if you view too many), but I don't need those. I have in mind to go to pages like /gamereview?table=XXXXXX and save the text logs. These pages are not disallowed by /robots.txt, so it seems like crawling should be allowed.
However, depending on how you read the Terms of Service, crawling may be totally disallowed:
"[Users agree] not to obtain information about Users and the Content they publish using automated methods (such as robots, spiders, etc.); not to use the Services and/or the BGA Sites using automated methods (such as robots, spiders, multiple queries, etc.)."
Are game logs "user-created content"? Does "use the services" include just loading pages?
If I use a human-like delay between page requests, say 10 seconds, would it be acceptable to have a crawler gather these logs? I'd prefer an authoritative answer, but I'm also happy to hear experienced speculation.
