IP: Eyeballs or Spiders?

[Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

Date: Fri, 01 Nov 1996 15:29:05 -0500
To: farber () central cis upenn edu (David Farber)
From: Jock Gill <jgill () penfield-gill com>


David,


I suggest that any readers of your IP list who provide access to
intellectual property via the web should check their logs for an interesting
new development.


Some publishers'logs are showing single sites downloading massive numbers of
pages at the fastest rates possible during a single session.  Look for
series of pages viewed for just a few seconds.  Some spiders make the rounds
on a daily basis.  This phenomena appears to be just a few weeks old.


If you find this condition, you are probably being visited by a spider.
Some of these spiders politely say who sent them, most do not and many hide
behind firewalls.  The data suggest that the most egregious of these spiders
come from a single country.  Which country has sent the spiders you find?


Questions:


What are the spiders doing with the snarfed pages?


Spiders create no click throughs or exposures [eyeballs] so what is the
impact on advertising?


What is the impact of service and performance for 'real' customers?


Is this a mis-appropriation of IP?


Should the spiders be:
        charged?
        trapped?
        attacked?
        forced to identify themselves?


Would a micro payment system cure this by charging 2.5 cents per page?  Or
should their be a higher charge? Lower?


Does anybody really care in the first place?


Regards,


Jock Gill


 ____________________________________________________________________________
                                Jock Gill
                            Penfield Gill, Inc.
                               Boston,  MA
                          jgill () penfield-gill com           
                    <http://www.penfield-gill.com/gill>
 ____________________________________________________________________________