Ethical to use same form tags a competitor for easy export

[DrumAt5280]

I am developing a classified ad site where the main competitor pretty much owns the market. I would like to take away some of their customers by making it easy for their existing clients to switch to my classifieds site.

While i know it is probably not ethical or legal to setup some sort of export function that would take info from the competitor's site to mine (if not impossible to do) - would it be ethical for me to use the exact same form tags so i could create an export function from my site to the competitors site (the idea is to enter the ad only once)?

I am not sure how this can be done, i want to know if it is an acceptable thing to do before i even look in to it.

 

[ChrisHirst]

don't see why not. form tags are form tags are form tags! rather difficult to use anything else for a form in HTML.




Chris.

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[DrumAt5280]

So basically i can't be sued for using the exact same form tags as my competitor such as "applicationFee" for an input field where you enter your application fee?

 

[trollacious]

If the names are logical for the inputs, I don't see what anyone could say. You'll just have to watch the other site to see if they change <input> names. As well, you want to make the layout different from theirs somewhat, different sizes for the inputs, different arrangement, different wording where you can. Unless someone were to actually look at the HTML source for the page, they wouldn't know the names for the form elements were the same.

Lee

 

[DrumAt5280]

Thanks Troll.

I am plan on doing those things you mentioned to make it as different as possible.

Now on to the question of can it be done - I know how to export the information to an Excel spreadsheet or other that would come off my site, and i think i know how to send the info to the input form fields on the competitor site - i guess my site and their site would have to be open and logged in at the same time.

 

[trollacious]

Are you going to submit the information to their processing page? You can probably do that directly, as long as they don't check for the referrer URL.

I don't quite understand how using things from their site will increase business for you, though.

Lee

 

[DrumAt5280]

Lee,

You are right, it might not help my business.

What i need to do is be able to pull info from their classifieds into my system, because their clients are going to be reluctant to re-enter all their info on to my system.

I am scared that there might be some copyright issues they (competitor) might have over their clients data.

 

[trollacious]

It sounds like you'll have to read the classified pages and then pull the data from the individual ads over into a database of your own. The closest thing to making it easy that I can think of off the top of my head is putting the competitor's site in an iframe and letting a prospective client find their ad on the competitor's site, copy the text, and paste it into a text area on your site. That's getting a bit technically advanced for a lot of people, and you won't be able to make it easy to copy things from a page you have no control over. Sounds like quite a project you have ahead of you.

Lee

 

[DrumAt5280]

Lee,

Thanks. When i read you last comment i came up with an idea, how about using a spider to grab the info from their fields and then enter the info from the spider directly in to my database. I think that is do-able.

Two problems that might happen - the competitor could change the form variables or disallow my spider once they start to notice it.

However these guys are listed in the top 5,000 sites on Alexa, they have so much traffic, i doubt they would notice a small little innocent spider.

 

[trollacious]

As long as you don't hit them too often, that might work. You're going to be saving a lot of information for the actual number of accounts you get, won't you? You'll have to get part of the customer information before being able to sort through the data you have to see if there's something already on record, like at least a phone number to match the one with the original ad.

This is the kind of project where you need someone to sit with and bounce ideas back and forth until you come up with something that works well.

Lee

 

[DrumAt5280]

I thought of an example of this that kind of compares to this issue:

When you load Firefox or Netscape on your computer it will ask if you want to import Favorites from Internet Explorer (if you use it). Of course MS does not own your favorites so i see this as non-issue. However, your favorites are located on your local machine and not on someone else server like in my case, so it is a bit different.

 

[BillyRayPreachersSon]

Why would people want to list items on your site if they have already listed them on anothe site?

If the item sells on site 1, the auction on site 2 would then have to be cancelled.

This really sounds like more hassle than it's worth, and I think that you should just concentrate on making a good site, rather than trying to "win over" people from rivals... If your site is good enough, people will come and use it regardless.

Dan


[tt]D'ya think I got where I am today because I dress like Peter Pan here?[/tt]

 

[ChrisHunt]

You seem to be talking about two different things here:

(1) Having people enter their information on your site, but passing it on to another. Technically that's pretty simple to do. However, you may be on shaky ground legally as you might be deemed to be passing yourself off as a part of this other site. Trademark infringement may be an issue too, depending on how you design your page.

(2) Scraping information from the other site in order to put it on yours. That's not too complicated either, though you're going to be victim to any redesign they might do to their pages in the future. See if they have an XML version of their adverts that might be more stable. Legally you're probably OK, provided you have the permission of the original advertiser to do the transfer. What's not OK is to scrape a page of ads from your rival, then mail the advertisers saying "Would you like to be on my site too?". That's called spam.

If you decide to proceed with either of the above, you should get some proper legal advice first. Since I can't see how either of the above is going to make you any money, it's probably better to play it safe, avoid these techniques, and save yourself a lawyer's bill.

-- Chris Hunt
Webmaster & Tragedian
Extra Connections Ltd

 

[DrumAt5280]

Thanks for all your replies on the subject - I guess if I have an new client switching over to my site, i can offer that person a free manual transfer (do by hand) of their ads - that should bypass all the legal stuff.