[cookiecaper]

I think we're having a communication issue here again. I do appreciate your willingness to continue the discussion, because it helps me find the points that are unclear and that need refinement, so thanks for that.

I don't think we should force companies not to have a paid API, that's all well and good. What I want to remove is their ability to stop scrapers from gathering the data from the generic public interface just because they don't like the way the scraper is using the information.

[kbenson]

Yeah, we're mostly in agreement on that. I don't believe in locking down data that is provided free of charge to the public in one manner from other methods of access (i.e. eyeballs vs scraping) in any way beyond normal usage rate limiting that applies equally to all.

As it pertains to this specific story, I think Twitter was well within their rights and norms to try to move a special cased user to some more traditional offering of their, or to at least make them justify their usage. I also think it's well within Emojitracker's rights and is acceptable to try to make a public stink if they think they are getting a raw deal. The only thing that I think leaves a bad taste in my mouth is that he did so prior to attempting a good faith negotiation with Twitter.