Quote:
Originally Posted by mldavis2
Why is Amazon doing this? Simple - monopolistic market control.
From a practical standpoint, Amazon does not generate images, they obtain them from other sources such as publishers. While Goodreads cannot now obtain book information via URL links to Amazon, there is no reason that a user cannot obtain cover images from any source such as scanning or online images, rename the file and upload them. Let your conscience be your guide. There is no practical way to determine the origin of an image. If you do use an image from an online source such as a publisher, B&N or whatever, rename it and upload it. Stay away from Amazon images if you can but if that's the only source and you own the book or eBook, you should be able to use it to enter in your own personal library.
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It's also about competition - Amazon owns Shelfari.
There is a procedure that should be followed here. Images (and other data) should only be sourced in the following ways:
-obtained from the author or publisher of the book
-obtained from a non-commercial site that GR now has an agreement with or who has an open data policy which allows such use of the image. (There is a list of many pre-approved sites
in this FAQ thread.)
-from an actual copy of the book. For ebooks, covers can be "pulled" from the actual ebook by opening it in K4PC and screencapping the cover. This is the ebook equivalent of scanning or photographing the cover.
Simply downloading any file and then uploading it to GR without doing due diligence to ensure it can legally be used could be harmful to Goodreads. Also, the cover attached to the book must match the edition listed.
Quote:
Originally Posted by elemenoP
Does this mean anything for Calibre? I don't know where the book data comes from when you "get data" in Calibre. But I know book covers come from Amazon (among other choices). So will Calibre no longer be able to get any data or book covers from Amazon?
eP
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Kiwidude already answered this, but I can confirm that GR had a data usage agreement pertaining to data received via one or more of Amazon's APIs. While I've obviously not seen the agreement and I'm not privy to any details, this type of thing is a lot different than a) how calibre gets the data, and b) how the data is used.