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throwaway4392

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It's a non-issue. If you can build it, someone else can (and will). If your business is dependent upon the idea itself you are probably doomed or at least in for a hell of a fight. Anyone with funding could always come along with 10x the cash and resources to throw at the problem.

I recommend designing and building a business around some kind of competitive advantage, like data. In that case, even if your competitors have all of your code they still can't compete with you.

At the very least you can use these techniques to know what not to do when scraping, and therefore scrape better.

Data Brokers 7 years ago

Oh really? Yet you probably use Google, Facebook and a ton of other services that do far worse.

Data Brokers 7 years ago

Err-- I have a successful business that falls under the "data broker" category and requires I register, but I won't.

I won't because they don't tell you what the "fee" is until the Attorney General "reviews" the submission and then assigns a fee to you. Sounds like extortion to me. I am not going to give them all of the leverage and then accept whatever fee they want to levy on me. If they want me to register, have a fixed fee and be up front about it.

I am willing to accept the penalty fee for not registering. At least I know what it is and it's well within the financial capability of my business, so who really cares.

Selling people's data is fine as long as the state gets a cut I guess?