I am an independent developer who wanted to write a simple commercial app to display movie showtime information. After doing a whole lot of research, I could not find any good "legal" way of getting this data.
One option I considered was screen-scraping or scraping xml feeds but reading through the Terms And Conditions, I don't think this option is the right way to go.
Another option is to figure something out with a company called Tribune Media Services. Looks like this company supplies showtime API to sites such as google, yahoo, fandango etc. But an individual developer like me cannot probably afford this for a small commercial app.
Then I decided to look for other ideas like building a Finance related app but again data source became a big issue. I don't understand why several sites like Billboards provide API but not for commercial use.
I am all for paying for using API/Data but I could not find an "Amazon-Web-Service-like" scheme where individual or small business folks can pay for what they use ! I think this would encourage a lot of innovation and can also provide the data content owners some money.
Are there such APIs out there in the Entertainment or Finance domain where I can develop commercial apps without doing any screen-scraping ?
Lastly, would linking to a showtimes page be considered legal ? For example, if user wants to see showtimes for a particular theater, can we generate a link to the google showtimes page in the app when clicked takes you to the Google Showtimes page (on the browser) ?
Thanks !
Source: Tips4all
Source: Tips4allSource: CCNA FINAL EXAM
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