In many/most? cases if you provide a link back to Amazon with any content I believe you should be ok. That said, I am not a lawyer and do not play one on tv.
-----Original Message-----
From: Next generation catalogs for libraries [mailto:NGC4LIB_at_listserv.nd.edu] On Behalf Of GINTHER, Craig
Sent: Friday, February 22, 2008 12:01 PM
To: NGC4LIB_at_listserv.nd.edu
Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] Use of Amazon.com Content in Koha's Catalog
Hello all, I was reviewing the message below in light of recent changes to Amazon Web Services (from ECS to Amazon Associates) and see the following in the Terms of Use now, not sure if it was always there:
5.1.3. You are not permitted to use Amazon Associates Web Service with any Application or for any use that does not have, as its principal purpose, driving traffic to the Amazon Website and driving sales of products and services on the Amazon Website.
It seems to me that this may have some impact on use of Amazon for cover images in OPACs. Thoughts on this?
-----Original Message-----
From: Next generation catalogs for libraries
[mailto:NGC4LIB_at_listserv.nd.edu]On Behalf Of Joshua Ferraro
Sent: Tuesday, December 12, 2006 9:27 PM
To: NGC4LIB_at_listserv.nd.edu
Subject: [NGC4LIB] Use of Amazon.com Content in Koha's Catalog
Hey gang,
Over the past few years, since I wrote the original Amazon.com module
for Koha, I've received literally hundreds of complaints, mostly from
librarians, about the legality of Koha's use of Amazon.com's Web
Services. In fact, it's fair to say I've spent considerably more time
responding to these questions than I did writing the original module.
So the bottom line is, I wasn't surprised that within minutes of my
response to Amy's NGC list, the Amazon questions started pouring in :-).
I've gotten a few dozen already, some of which are on-list. Rather than
repeat myself, I'll just make one public statement on the topic, that
covers the typical questions raised; so please don't be offended if I
don't reply individually to all of you. I'd be happy to field any
additional questions on the topic on-list.
So ... first of all, shocking as it may seem, Koha has the capability to
use Amazon.com content in the OPAC. To see this in action, feel free to
visit the Athens Public Library's OPAC:
http://search.athenscounty.lib.oh.us.
It's perfectly legal to use the content. In fact, Amazon.com expressly
created the web services program so that people would use it. Their
business angle is no different than any other content provider -- they
expect to make money. The difference is that they don't want to make the
money from the people using the content. Instead, they are hoping that
the content will drive users to their website and that those users will
purchase something.
If you have hesitations about this business model and don't think your
library should be involved in it, no problem, you can simply
turn it off in your Koha installation and purchase similar services from
other content providers with more traditional compensation methods.
No-one is going to try to force you to use Amazon.com :-). And for the
record, I'd be happy to have a philosophical discussion about the rights
and wrongs of using public money to purchase non-traditional (or traditional
for that matter ) content services that promote a specific online company
any time. :-)
However, if, like the libraries that LibLime supports, you are on a tight
budget, yet want to provide your patrons with this content, Amazon.com's
alternative service model gives you that ability. Here's how it works
and why it's legal.
Let me preface this by adding that I've had extensive conversations with
Amazon.com's US legal department about Koha's use of Web Services, and
they have confirmed that Koha does not violate the terms of their
agreement. This point is worth making: they _want_ your library to use
their content :-).
First off, a bit of background on Amazon.com's Web Services Program.
The basic idea is that Amazon provides machine-readable access to
content they have for sale. That content is indexed by ISBN number,
which makes it trivial to identify a relationship between an item in a
library catalog and an item on Amazon.com. Here's what the Web Services
currently contain that libraries are interested in:
1. Item Jacket Cover Images
2. Item reviews by Amazon.com patrons
3. Item ratings by Amazon.com patrons
4. Professionaly written item descriptions and reviews
Koha's Amazon module can interact with Amazon.com's web services program
in several possible ways, in accordance with the license agreement[1] that
every Web Services user must abide by:
1. Koha can be configured to periodically download content en masse and
locally cache the content on one of your library services and
serve it to your users via the OPAC;
2. Koha can download the content in real-time as an OPAC page is loaded.
The Web Services agreement has very specific requirements about usage and
discusses both of these methods in great detail. The most relevant points
to this discussion are:
* if content is cached locally, it must be updated every 24 hours;
* if you download in real-time, you can only download up to 1000 items
per IP address per day;
* if you download in real-time, you cannot download more than one item per
second per IP address.
* if you use their content, you must provide a link back to _any_
Amazon.com page
Since Koha's system supports both cacheing and real-time downloads of the
content, based on a library's usage patterns, they would need to determine
which method or combination of methods would work best for their situation.
Keep in mind that images are downloaded from the user's browser, not from the
Koha application, so the 1000 queries per day per IP address and 1/second rule
don't apply to the Koha server.
If a library didn't want to cache data locally, yet had more than 1000
views of their detail pages, it would be very trivial to simply track the
number of times that Amazon.com content was syndicated, and turn it off
after the day's cap. It would be similarly trivial to keep track of the
number of queries to detail pages per second and only permit one per
second; or to use javascript to download the content from the browser
rather than the server. It's not at all difficult to use Amazon's program
without abusing it. And it's ultimately up to each library to make an
informed decision about whether and how to use it.
So ... hope this qwells the fears somewhat. Feel free to ask for more
clarification.
Cheers,
--
Joshua Ferraro SUPPORT FOR OPEN-SOURCE SOFTWARE
President, Technology migration, training, maintenance, support
LibLime Featuring Koha Open-Source ILS
jmf@liblime.com |Full Demos at http://liblime.com/koha |1(888)KohaILS
[1] Here's a link to the entire Web Services Agreement:
http://www.amazon.com/AWS-License-home-page-Money/b/ref=sc_fe_c_2_3434651_2/105-6373537-4758038?ie=UTF8&node=3440661&no=3434651&me=A36L942TSJ2AJA
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Received on Fri Feb 22 2008 - 16:13:16 EST