Hi Jos,
>
On the bottom of the Yahoo page it clearly states you cannot redistribute the data. Thats to be expected since if you could then how do Reuters, Bloomberg, etc, who are the source of the data make money from it.
No discussion here... In the EU they specifically added some laws for that matter.

>In respect of using it in your own app's for your own use I am not sure. I imagine that a Yahoo would buy their real time data and display it on their site in order to get users to view their pages and thereby see their adverts. That is their business model. If someone screen scraps the data then they are bypassing the adverts and therefore losing Yahoo advertising revenue. Clearly in that scenario Yahoo (or whoever) makes no money and one would question why they would allow it?

That would make an argument for banning screen washers as well...
I think as long as anybody openly "publishes" the data on the net, he may choose any business model he likes, may it be direct pay, access security or subsidy via advertizing. But you cannot force the user's way of consuming the data. Using special encryption / your own accessing software might be a special case, but that is another business case in my view.

>I ... am not stating a fact but rather a laymans opinion.
ditto

>I have noticed over the years that real time data vendors and stock exchanges have become more, not less, protective of their data.
Ummh... couldnt say so for sure. My take is: there is MUCH fluctuation in that area, which leads me to believe that many "business models" might just have died and others are springing up. 20 Years ago most services were VERY expensive. The trend (as I see it) is that more people are getting the data cheaper / for free with some effort. But in this area I wouldn't *argue* <g>.

The time lag, which was another way of getting money (15 minutes old for free, current data for pay) is getting shorter and the data format can be accessed "intelligently" by screen scraping giving you nearly current data - but you will pay every time the publisher changes his layout.

Been there, done that (to a paid(!) service - to give automatic warnings via SMS when all they published was HTML - special case, but similar in technique).

my 0.02 EUR

thomas