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by pyoung 4713 days ago
Seems like Urbanspoon should be using some sort of scraping counter measures to make things a little more fair. I sent them an e-mail through their contact form (of course I wouldn't be suprised if those are sent straight to the trash/spam folder).

Also, is scraping legal? I would imagine, at the very least, the OP and others are violating the TOS. I have written a few scripts of my own for fun, but I would be careful about bragging about it on a public blog.

1 comments

Well, looks like they do actually respond to the contact form, got an e-mail from them a few moments ago saying they were "aware of the situation". Although, looks like this blog has been picked up by some mainstream news outlets, who have been getting comments from Urbanspoon:

http://insidescoopsf.sfgate.com/blog/2013/07/25/are-automate...