reading a web page contents, worth it or not?

[map200uk]

Hi,

 

this is a question relating to both the PHP and the practicality of it, i am building a system at present and would like to encompass a function which drags lyrics off the Internet for a song based on the song title and artist (extracted via ID3)

 

however, there does not seem to be on source of lyrics database without ads etc, so if i did it i could :

 

 

a) make it do a google 'im feeling lucky' search for ID3->Artist + ID3->SongTitle,

 

however i would then have to somehow go through the document and strip out everything i.e. ads except the lyrics (I cant think how to do this) not the code..i mean at all, as there is no criteria we could use to check if the text = lyrics?

 

or is this just not a good idea and wont work?

 

Thanks as ever!

 

Mark

[Glyde]

It's possible, but it's not very practical.  First of all, you'd probably be violating a few copyrights by stripping the lyrics from these sites (though I guess you could do it without them knowing).  But even if you weren't worried about this...you have to send a request to Google, and get the Location: header from the response, then load that page.  It would take all of about 3-6 seconds to retrieve both pages, plus a little more time to preg_match the lyrics out of the HTML, along with the approximate .25-1 second it'll take to read the ID3 information.  Total page execution time will be around 4-7 seconds, and that's if the files exist in your server.  If it's from another server or if they're being uploaded...more time gets added.

[Psycho]

however, there does not seem to be on source of lyrics database without ads etc

 

Perhaps that is how they are able to generate revenue to pay the expenses of creating the content, servers, wages, etc. to make the lyrics available. But, hey you should be able to put their content on your site as if it was yours without paying a dime, right? Mind if I screen-scrape your site and pass off the content as my own?

[Glyde]

however, there does not seem to be on source of lyrics database without ads etc

 

Perhaps that is how they are able to generate revenue to pay the expenses of creating the content, servers, wages, etc. to make the lyrics available. But, hey you should be able to put their content on your site as if it was yours without paying a dime, right? Mind if I screen-scrape your site and pass off the content as my own?

Well actually most lyrics sites have no "workers", just a server admin.  The majority of the lyrics is submitted by the users.  And technically, the site is still getting money for his view to their site.  Just as much as they would if a normal user went to the site and viewed the ads.  The only valid point you make in your post is that he's not giving them credit, which he should do.

[Psycho]

The advertising space a site can sell is not just limited to the traffic the site has. Click-through percentage is a prime factor in how much a site can charge. By scaping content an external site that has a lot of traffic could drastically reduce the click-through percentage for the content provider.

 

Personally, I don't usually take the time to prevent such activities. But, if I ever found that someone was doing something of their nature I would either ban them or do something really devious to provide just them with "custom" content.