Dear Fringe Website,
Your terms and conditions make me sad.
I work with the Web Science Trust and some of the big names in the Semantic Web and I was hoping I would be able to create “linked data” for the fringe festival. Linked data is the technique being used to publish government data on data.gov.uk and, according to Sir Tim Berners Lee, is the future of the web.
If I was able to do this (which I would happily do for free and with no bother to you), it would result in dozens of websites and phone apps remixing the fringe guide. While I’m sure your own iPhone app will be good (although I have a android phone, so no use to me), it would have been exciting to have 100’s of people providing alternate ways to work with the programme, and far more in the spirit of the fringe. Sadly it looks like the rules have been written from the perspective of advertising revenue and control, rather than fostering creativity and experimentation.
The Fringe will be awesome without linked data, but it could be and should be awesomer.
– Christopher Gutteridge.
ps. You really should rethink the policy “About linking by hypertext to our website” as it is unrealistic and draconian. I broke the terms and conditions by mentioning your URL in an unauthorised tweet.
There’s nothing that says “we don’t understand the Web” as much as the requirement that people should ask for permission before linking.
I hope that you’re going to mail them the URI of this page and ask for permission to link to them.
I’d really like to see those terms & conditions tested in court re. linking to their website. There may be no explicit precendent as yet, but I think it’s fair to say that there have been enough cases to predict that the Fringe will lose. A high profile case with something like this might be enough to make others think twice about similar ludicrous ideas.
Will tweet about this – including links to the necessary items – to spread the word.
Shame about the Linked Data – I’m on Android too. Apple have done a great job of convincing non-specialists that they are the only phone to worry about it seems. Trouble is it’s become mainstream, and there’s me thinking the Fringe was – well, supposed to about the Fringe. I guess it’s got mainstream too!
The thing is, while the restriction on creating links is daft and probably unenforceable, the fringe programme is clearly a copyright work which they created, own, and only provide under their own terms.
I have no worries about linking to them. I think they would have to reasonably go after everybody linking to them: 783 so far: http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=link%3Aedfringe.com
However, they clearly have an enthusiastic lawyer and it won’t do any good to create a public notion that linked data = pirate data. Even if data.gov is sharing large datasets via bittorrent!
Here’s another dumb one.
“You may only link to the site with the express written permission of the City of Mandurah. Any links, if allowed, must only link directly to the Site’s homepage (and no other pages within the Site) unless otherwise agreed by the City of Mandurah in writing.”
http://www.mandurah.wa.gov.au/terms_and_conditions
Hi Chris
I can’t find the policy “About linking by hypertext to our website” on their page – maybe your post has been influential in getting them to remove it. If so, well done 🙂
Well, I think the Guardian blog picking it up helped a bit! It’s not really the bit I cared about as it was unenforceable, but hopefully this will improve the public understanding and demand for open events data.