Idea for website...Is this legal?

[JMapleton]

I want to create a website that tracks and graphs the prices of certain consumer products, like some electronics.

Am I violating any sort of copywrites by reporting, tracking, and graphing prices?

Are there any other websites that do this for electronics?

 

[Puppies04]

I doubt that it would be a problem unless you had some automated program automatically stressing out another companies servers harvesting prices.

A word of warning though I am not a lawer, don't live in the US and am a grapefruit.

 

[Leros]

camelcamelcamel.com tracks Amazon prices and they haven't been sued. Apparently they also track prices for Best Buy and Newegg. It looks like Newegg blocked them from scraping their prices. http://blog.camelcamelcamel.com/post/49856798875/camelegg-needs-your-help

 

[AnonymouseUser]

n/m, they don't track and graph

 

[JMapleton]

camelcamelcamel.com tracks Amazon prices and they haven't been sued. Apparently they also track prices for Best Buy and Newegg. It looks like Newegg blocked them from scraping their prices. http://blog.camelcamelcamel.com/post/49856798875/camelegg-needs-your-help

I plan to do it all manually. Once a day, go in a mark every price for about 100-200 different products. I couldn't imagine this being an issue.

Anyone else have any advice?

 

[lxskllr]

That's fine. You're a journalist documenting publicly available information.

 

[fjmeat]

sounds like a cool site

 

[mikeford]

Most tracking sites, aka price search sites, sell out to the vendors and only track prices from places that send them prices and pay for referrals.

Too much work to do it daily manually, will suck rapidly, and then you stop. Better to come up with something with less effort. Places like Amazon have dynamic pricing that can change many times a day.

OTOH some sites may be happy to keep you informed of current prices with RSS etc.

 

[Imp]

I've seen a few around already. No idea how they work. Ones I've seen are Canadian and we gave very few retailers compared to Americanos.

 

[JMapleton]

Too much work to do it daily manually, will suck rapidly, and then you stop. Better to come up with something with less effort. Places like Amazon have dynamic pricing that can change many times a day.

I guess once a person got a certain point of having so many products, it would become difficult manually. Eventually I would have to automate it.

 

[bononos]

I want to create a website that tracks and graphs the prices of certain consumer products, like some electronics.

Am I violating any sort of copywrites by reporting, tracking, and graphing prices?

Are there any other websites that do this for electronics?

I don't think so. But some retail companies don't like it so some of their webpages require a click or add to cart to show the prices.

 

[JMapleton]

I don't think so. But some retail companies don't like it so some of their webpages require a click or add to cart to show the prices.

They don't do that for that reason. They do the "Add Cart for price" because some of the manufacturers have what's call "MAP" pricing. Minimum Advertised Price. Vendors get around this by saying "add to cart to see price." It's a loophole for not getting sued.

 

[phucheneh]

1995 called, it want its idea back.

 

[zerocool84]

1995 called, it want its idea back.

This

Nothing new at all. Used to go to sites like that when building a new computer.

 

[JMapleton]

1995 called, it want its idea back.

If I wanted to start a hamburger joint, would you say 1955 called, they want their idea back? It's about how you implement it.

 

[JMapleton]

This

Nothing new at all. Used to go to sites like that when building a new computer.

No one is doing this for my niche. No, I will not tell you what it is. But no one is doing it.