Copyright issues with Revolution searches

[Stgoldberg at aol.com]

I'm having a copyright attorney check out the issue and will get back to the 
group with an opinion.   Basically the question involves the difference 
between issuing a command like:

REvGoURL "http://images.google.com/"
which only goes to the google/images page, where the user can type in any 
search words s/he pleases "e.g. dogs",

versus: "http://images.google.com/images?svnum=10&hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&
q=dogs" where Revolution goes to the Google/image site and automatically does the 
search.

Personally (I'm not a lawyer), I can't think of a problem with just directing 
the user to the Google/image site from a revolution application, just as one 
can do the same from any website, whereupon the user can type in any search 
words s/he pleases.   The issue is with doing the automatic search. On the one 
hand, it's not doing anything much different from going to the Google/Image 
page and pasting in the search words for the user.   I can see where some search 
engines might object to this automaticity since it bypasses their home page, 
where they want the user to see their advertising.   Google, though doesn't 
have any advertising on their search page.   Nonetheless, I've sent in an 
application to Google for the right to use the automatic search engine in a Rev 
application and I'll let the group know the result, as well as the lawyer's 
opinion.

Regarding being limited to a certain number of queries/day, how can Google 
keep track of   a particular program that is distributed on different people's 
computers?   I can see how they might keep track of the number of queries from 
a single computer, but how can they know that 1000 people are using a 
particular Revolution application on their computers to do a search? How would they 
know that the application refers to my particular ID?
Steve Goldberg


In a message dated 1/31/06 10:43:34 AM, 
use-revolution-request at lists.runrev.com writes:


> 
> > I just went to this link to check it out.  You are only allowed 1000
> > queries per day, and the API is only for Non-Commercial use only.
> 
> But wait - it gets worse. Actually, it's *your id* that is limited to
> a certain number of queries per day. If you create and distribute an
> app then every time that app gets used it counts against your id.
> Worse yet, once you hit the limit any further use by *any* user will
> be firewalled. And your app gets the blame.
> 
> --
> -Mark Wieder
> mwieder at ahsoftware.net
>