calebclark

The efforts (and lawsuits) to lock down and control data on the public web threatens to stifle innovation. Websites are only valuable because they're connected to the internet, which for all intents and purposes, is a general utility. It was funded by the U.S. government, and is now managed by a consortium of NGOs such as ICANN, W3C, etc.

When you publish a website, you're distributing it to the world. It's similar to when you publish a book. It has always been the right of those who buy and read a book to be able to use the facts contained therein. Although readers are not allowed to steal the creative elements, they have a basic human right to use the facts however they desire. And the medium doesn't change this truth -- whether you read the book yourself, ask your friend to read it out loud, or employ a bot to read it. So it should be with websites.

Data placed on the public Web is accessible by everyone and should be usable by everyone. It shouldn't matter who parses the page's HTML, whether it's a person, a web browser, a bot or a robot.

We're starting a movement to ensure that the facts of the world are always available for innovators to build on top of: