I have been following the trail of conversation regarding Amazon.com and
thought it worth sharing our recent experience with Amazon. I
oversee the OPAC environment for Phoenix Public and was the
lead in implementing Amazon product data not only into our OPAC, but also
directly into our bibliographic data for searching. We have implemented
Endeca for our OPAC and have implemented various product elements into the
search index. Following the release of the Customer Service
Agreement from Amazon this past December, we requested clarification from
Amazon regarding the use of AWS for library catalogs and received the
following response:
"Thank you for contacting Amazon Web Services. Unfortunately your
application does not comply with section 5.1.3 of the AWS Customer
Agreement. We do not allow Amazon Associates Web Service to be used for
library catalogs. Driving traffic back to Amazon must be the primary
purpose for all applications using Amazon Associates Web
Service."
This response came from the support contact link on the AWS help pages. We
are investigating the possibility of establishing a direct relationship
with Amazon, however it appears that using AWS for purposes other than
section 5.1.3 is in violation of their agreement. We have subsequently
removed much of the Amazon content from our OPAC and are looking into
other sources of enriched data.
Jesse Haro, Web Services Manager
Phoenix Public Library
On Fri, 22 Feb 2008, GINTHER, Craig wrote:
> 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 Wed Mar 19 2008 - 14:47:04 EDT