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Comment by andrenotgiant | Hacker News Reader

I am curious: Given all of the trouble with scraped content on the web, why would data publishers want to make their data more machine-readable?

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Given all what trouble? You mean those few print publishers who don't understand the internet and are very vocal about it?

There has been very little actual trouble. Most business roll with new technology and use it to get an edge on their competitors that don't get it.

You've been listening to people who refuse to innovate and thinking they are the majority, or somehow a backbone of our society. They aren't either.

Maybe there is a refusal to innovate, but maybe we now have a structural problem wherein we simply don't need as many people to work on these things as a result of automation, and even information work jobs are going to diminish.

How do you tell these two scenarios apart?

I bet Yelp is probably thinking the same thing.

June 2, 2011 - "Google Places Now Borrowing Yelp Reviews Without Attribution In iPhone App"

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2611985

In my opinion yelp has no (exclusive) right to the user contributed data contained in its site. Google should not have to provide attribution to "yelp" if they scrape my yelp review, it should provide attribution to me.

Without having read them, it seems like that would depend on the TOS of Yelp.

Because if you don't provide a machine-readable description of your goods and services, somebody else will. And they'll get it wrong but you won't be able to get them to change it.

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