

Ask YC: Obtaining Public Record Data - kapitti

I'm in the midst of creating a prototype for a system that combines Real Estate Public Record data (think Zillow level data) with Criminal &#38; Sex Offender Public Record Data (think criminalsearches.com).<p>Zillow has a pretty clean API, but requires you to brand every page with their logo and links if you use their data.  CriminalSearches has no API.<p>Public record data is pretty easy to find on a State by State basis - but would involve writing a crawler to gather the data for each State (for Criminal) &#38; County (Real Estate).  Is anybody aware of an easier way to get this data?  I've tried to find people that will license the data feeds, but most don't allow commercial use of the data once you've subscribed to this type of service.<p>Any advice or expertise in the YC Community in this area?  Thanks.
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brandnewlow
Ask the EveryBlock guys how they get their data. <http://www.everyblock.com>

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kapitti
Thanks - we will try to get a hold of them. They don't look like they're using
verbatim Public Record datasets - but may come in handy.

