

Ask HN: Legality/Ethics of using a website's private API? - dpearson

I'm working on a project that I need sports data (specifically NHL stats) for, and I found via Firebug that there is a private API used internally on NHL.com.<p>I was wondering 1) if it's legal to use (I will be publishing summaries derived from the data; something like http://twitter.com/nflscorebot) and 2) if it's generally considered polite to use an API that wasn't built for public use (eg should I ask first?).<p>Thanks in advance for any help!
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mkr-hn
<http://www.nhl.com/ice/page.htm?id=26389>

CTRL+F for: Linking to the websites and embedding content

Quote: "Certain Services may provide you with the ability to embed Content
into other web pages, such as features of the NHL Network Online and the Team
video players at nhl.tv that enable you to embed NHL video into your blog, fan
site or other web page. All use of embedded Content must be for non-commercial
purposes only, and may be disabled by the NHL Parties at any time. Prohibited
commercial uses include any of the following actions taken without the express
approval of the NHL Parties: "

That sounds like it would cover the API even if it's not mentioned explicitly.

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dpearson
It's non-commercial, but, looking at that, I'm thinking that mentioning team
names would be the problem ("commercial text" would seem to apply)

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swanson
Can you use an approach like the NFLScorebot is using?

[https://github.com/nflscorebot/learn/blob/master/learn.js#L1...](https://github.com/nflscorebot/learn/blob/master/learn.js#L108)

Scraping the data from a public page is probably better than using a private
API.

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dpearson
NFLScoreBot is actually my project. I was hoping a private API might be a bit
less of a gray area legally, but at this point I'm almost wondering if
scraping is the way to go again.

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alexholehouse
I'd probably ask, not least because if they say no you'll have to figure out a
different approach now, which, ultimately is going to be a lot easier than
restructuring your whole product if they find out a cut you off in like a
month.

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dpearson
I'll shoot them an email (if I can find an email address) and see what they
say. Thanks for the help.

