The
minimum cost to license the IMDB data is $10,000/USD per-year.
We've already been approached by a client who is VERY interested in repurposing this content + images for his project, and we approached IMDB as a liason for the client.
Now we know quite a bit about the innards of their content and structure, and how they do business. We have the whole IMDB datastore + images here (no, not "spidered" from their public website). With the proper conversion logic and queries coming from the database, with a moderate amount of work up-front, it is possible to make a really high-quality product out of the data.
Some interesting statistics:
Code:
Total Titles: 416,989
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movies released theatrically 303,846
made for TV movies 44,915
TV series 30,342
direct to video movies 30,675
mini series 3,874
Links Offsite
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Photos/Images 3,347
Comments/Reviews 176,028
Total People: 1,613,762
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Occupation Names Entries
---------- ----- -------
actors 539,977 2,410,701
actresses 326,978 1,239,687
directors 90,159 409,546
producers 121,717 397,418
writers 132,971 465,157
Photos/Images 8,338
There is a lot more contained in each record, but that should give you an idea of how utterly massive the whole project actually is.
That being said, if their redistribution of it is within legal limits,
they've already paid $20,000/USD at a minimum to redistribute the IMDB content for 2003 and 2004.
I didn't see any sort of license or notice disclaiming or exclaiming ownership or liability of the content. Can I export the IMDB data to another format, and sell it, using the iSilo version as a base? (No, I cannot, but it isn't mentioned anywhere, as it should be, since iSilo does not own this content).
They're all minor nits, but since I represent several commercial clients who are in the publishing business, making sure the "quality of the mobile ebook industry" remains fairly pure, is important. If there are companies who are abusing the benefits of their own industry (such as redistributing copyrighted content without proper licensing), it makes everyone look bad.