IMDb Licensing Discussion

[ruarai]

First of all, thanks for making this - loved the website it replaced so I'm glad someone stepped in here.

But I can't seem to get search working today. Worked fine yesterday.

Typing for example 'making' into the search box returns this in the console:

Cross-Origin Request Blocked: The Same Origin Policy disallows reading the remote resource at https://api.graphtv.spectralcoding.com/search/making. (Reason: CORS header 'Access-Control-Allow-Origin' missing).

Not sure if this issue is on my or your end, but seems to prevent search from working at all.

[ruarai]

Actually looks like this is causing issues all over the site. I'm guessing this is definitely either only on my end or you've noticed this already

[ckabalan]

Hi @ruarai,

I've temporarily taking the site offline while I investigate some things. Will update this issue when resolved.

Thanks!

[ckabalan]

@ruarai See the following issue on a similar project: https://github.com/obtuseio/tv/issues/8

I've duplicated my conversation with IMDb below:

I contacted the IMDb Helpdesk privately with the following:

To: IMDb Helpdesk From: Caesar Kabalan / Dandelock Subject: IMDb Ratings Data Fair Use Body: I would like to write a small website which uses the publicly available IMDb dataset (http://www.imdb.com/interfaces/) to show ratings data for TV Shows in graph form. You type in a TV Show name and it shows a chart with the ratings for each episode which gives you an idea on how well received the show was as it progressed.

This website would be 100% non-commercial and would be cheap enough to host that it would not require ads or any monetization. It would however be displaying data from the public IMDb dataset. All data would be cleared marked as sourced from IMDb and kept up to date.

Does IMDb have a stance on whether we can use a subset of the data this way?

Any response would be helpful!

I've posed the question publicly if you're looking for additional details: https://getsatisfaction.com/imdb/topics/imdb-ratings-data-fair-use

They responded to the forum post linked at the bottom of the email and then privately to my helpdesk ticket a few hours later:

To: Caesar Kabalan / Dandelock From: IMDb Helpdesk Subject: Re: IMDb Ratings Data Fair Use Body: Hi Caesar,

No, your usage wouldn't qualify for our intended usage of our free dataset. That dataset has very limited allowed uses -- namely, private & personal use (meaning, no one else sees our data in your work except you) or in-the-classroom academic work (gor example, a paper or thesis for a class).

The fact that you won't monetize your website doesn't mean that the usage isn't commercial. You would require our commercial content license for your use case.

Our license product is aimed at large companies. Our licensees include The New York Times, Viacom, United Airlines, and Verizon among many others. As such, there is a license fee that starts at five figures. We assume that this is well beyond your means for your project, but if it's not, please let us know and we'll put you in touch with the right licensing people here.

Regards, The IMDb Help Desk

I marked my question as resolved. Unfortunately it looks like these GraphTV type websites aren't possible using IMDb's data directly.

[ckabalan]

As a follow up after almost two years I reached out to IMDb again. No luck. See the interaction below:

To: IMDb Helpdesk From: Caesar Kabalan / Dandelock Body: Hello,

In January 2018 I wrote the licensing department with a question on developing an free online tool to visualize the ratings of TV shows over time. I wrote the Help Desk and posted a public question with an example graph [1]. I was told this request would not meet the private/academic use requirements of the dataset.

There is still considerable public interest in having a place to visualize this data. IMDb obviously has the best community following for Movies and TV Shows and therefore has the most accurate ratings due to sample size.

Is it possible that we can come to an agreement on the usage of this data without a substantial licensing fee? I am open to pretty much any limitations, attributions, etc your team feels are necessary. For example, in the future if the official IMDb website were to implement similar functionality I would replace my website with a landing page direct users to go there. Personally I see this as a service we can provide to the community, which gives positive exposure and has little downside for IMDb. Mostly I am hoping you are open to the discussion.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

• Caesar Kabalan

[1] https://getsatisfaction.com/imdb/topics/imdb-ratings-data-fair-use

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To: Caesar Kabalan / Dandelock From: IMDb Helpdesk Body: Hi Caesar,

Thanks for your message and the background. We've run this by quickly to a few people here and we're forwarding to a few more for their thoughts.

The quick feedback is that we're still not likely to grant the permission that you seek without a commercial agreement between our company and your company (or individual, though it's odd to strike a contract with an individual in these cases). You're taking our data, creating something valuable with it, and presenting it to the public, which is our customer base as well. That is how we view this. Which is why we'd only agree to it under certain contractual terms & conditions, likely a content license.

But, as we said, we're running your request by a few more folks for added thinking.

If you would be interested in discussing a commercial content license, you can email IMDb's Head of Business Development directly to inquire. He manages that line of business for our company. He is Harry Lin at harrylin@imdb.com

Best regards, IMDb Customer Service

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To: IMDb Helpdesk From: Caesar Kabalan / Dandelock Body: Hello IMDb Custom Service,

I appreciate at least asking around and look forward to the final answer.

Without having seen the official commercial agreement I can't say for certain but I don't think I would have an issue committing to the same legal terms, signing as an already existing LLC instead of an individual. I fully expected your organization to require an agreement in order to use the data. That is totally acceptable. The real challenge (as an individual or a single-member LLC) is the license cost traditionally attached to the agreement (>$50,000). From a contract validity standpoint I could provide a very small yearly payment so that all terms are still met, but you would effectively be granting me a free license "in spirit".

Thank you for your time, Caesar Kabalan

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To: Caesar Kabalan / Dandelock From: IMDb Helpdesk Body: Hi Caesar,

There isn't any interest in striking a low-cost license for this.

And there was no further interest in exploring an alternative commercial agreement with you for this.

We appreciate your interest in it and your follow-up from the first time.

Best regards, IMDb Customer Service

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To: IMDb Helpdesk From: Caesar Kabalan / Dandelock Body: Hello IMDb Customer Service,

Thank you for your time and consideration. In closing I would point you to two excerpts:

Amazon.com Mission Statement: Our vision is to be earth's most customer-centric company; to build a place where people can come to find and discover anything they might want to buy online.

About IMDb: IMDb is the world's most popular and authoritative source for information on movies, TV shows, and celebrities. Products and services to help fans decide what to watch and where to watch it include: the IMDb website for desktop and mobile devices; [ ... ]

Your users come to IMDb to decide what to watch next. They want the capability to view ratings for TV shows in an easy to consume visual format so that they can more easily decide. This is in line with both the Amazon and IMDb mission statements. You have the best source for this data. You're not currently providing this service, and won't allow others access to the data without a hefty fee. Please consider adding this as a feature for your website, your customers would be grateful!

Thank you for your time, Caesar Kabalan