

Business Insider responds to Marco's complaints about scraping - rradu
http://www.businessinsider.com/marco-arment-business-insider-2011-9?page=1

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smoyer
Wow ... I think there was a definite misunderstanding on Marco's part, but
that's a pretty snarky response veiled as an "apology". And even a little bit
of "it was completely accidental" thrown in for good measure.

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BenSS
What is Marco misunderstanding? He doesn't know how the site operates, or that
they were 'trying things out'. I really don't buy the long-winded explanation.
The pages are still available, and easily findable. It's not like he went out
of his way to locate them.

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smoyer
True ... misunderstanding isn't quite what I was trying to convey. When I read
Marco's original accusation, it was pretty obvious that they hadn't just
scraped the whole article. If you were intent on stealing it, why not take the
whole thing? But I was confused by the lack of attribution.

I was more interested in commenting on their reply ... and I agree that it was
overly long for what they conveyed. It could have been a lot shorter if they
hadn't spent so much time trying to make Marco look like the one who was in
the wrong. And I still don't believe he was ... whether or not he knew what he
was looking at.

The other thing that struck me was that their technical solution sounded a bit
hacked. Perhaps their developers are ham-stringed by poor architectural
decisions. If not, then the article made them sound either incompetent or
lazy.

