Websites Can Contractually Restrict Third Party Scraping of Their Data

E-commerce service providers can contractually prevent other websites from copying factual information from their website for commercial use, such as for price comparison purposes.

On 15 January 2015, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) confirmed in a preliminary ruling that websites not protected by a database right, are free to impose contractual restrictions on the use of their data. Interestingly, the CJEU acknowledged that the contractual restrictions could – if national law permits - be imposed through the website’s terms and conditions.

Let’s have a quick look at how this matter arose. Since the early days of online reservations, some websites discovered that they could attract a lot of visitors by comparing the online prices displayed by e-commerce websites selling competing goods and services. Originally such third party websites were called “content aggregators” and today one particular type, so-called “price comparison” websites, is widely-known.  To be able to aggregate such content and create added-value for the consumer, these websites use automated software that visits the e-commerce websites and copies the latter’s pricing information in real time. This practice is often referred to as “screen scraping” and frequently occurs in the online travel reservation business. Some of these third party websites do not only show the compared prices of airline tickets but act as an intermediary for booking travel packages, including car and hotel rental services on top of the airline ticket, often after adding a commission.

In response, low-cost airlines quickly started taking legal action against such screen scraping practices, fearing the loss of such additional, revenue-generating services to these third party websites and also through suffering reputational damage when consumers were not properly informed about issues such as flight changes and cancellations. In these circumstances there was one case between the low-cost airline, Ryanair, and the third party website owner, PR Aviation BV, in which the Dutch Supreme Court made a preliminary ruling request to the CJEU.

The CJEU, in its preliminary ruling on the scope of database protection and contractual freedom, ruled in Ryanair’s favour. It concluded that, in the absence of any database related copyright or sui generis protection on Ryanair’s website, Ryanair was expressly allowed to lay down contractual limitations on the use of its website by third parties. Ryanair would not have had such contractual freedom if its database enjoyed copyright or sui generis database protection (due to the restriction laid down in Article 15 of the Database Directive 96/9/EC). Ryanair’s terms and conditions, to which users had to visibly agree when searching for flights (but without needing to explicitly tick a box), indeed stated that the use of any automated system or software to extract data from its website for commercial purposes was prohibited. Ryanair even went as far as to explicitly state that other websites could not sell its flights and that price comparison websites had to enter into a written licence agreement with Ryanair,
to access Ryanair’s price, flight and timetable information for the sole purpose of price comparison.

As a consequence of the CJEU’s ruling, any website making available mere factual information not protected by any legal right, can still prevent others from using such information through its terms and conditions. Clearly, that website will have to demonstrate under applicable (national) law that the website visitor is contractually bound, in particular because it validly agreed to such terms and conditions. Depending on the applicable law, such agreement by the consumer could be considered as having taken place by ticking a box or merely after having been made aware of the website’s terms and conditions.

The CJEU’s ruling is likely to impact upon the business model of a number of content aggregating/price comparison websites. The ruling’s concrete relevance, however, will have to be assessed on a case-by-case basis.

Source:http://www.timelex.eu/en/blog/detail/websites-can-contractually-restrict-third-party-scraping-of-their-data

How You Can Identify Buying Preferences of Customers Using Data Mining Techniques

The New Gold Rush: Exploring the Untapped ‘Data Mining’ Reserves of Top 3 Industries

In a bid to reach new moms bang on time, Target knows when you’ll get pregnant. Microsoft knows Return on Investment (ROI) of each of its employee. Pandora knows what’s your current music mood. Amazing, isn’t it?

Call it the stereotype of mathematician nerds or Holy Grail of predictive analysts of modern day, Data Mining is the new gold rush for many industries.

Today, companies are mining data to predict exact actions of their prospective customers. That means, when a huge chunk of customer data is seen through a series of sophisticated, formatted and collective data mining process, it can help create future-ready content of marketing and buying messages, diminishing scope of errors and maximizing customer loyalty.

Also a progressive team of coders and statisticians help push the envelope as far as the marketing and business tactics are concerned by collecting data and mining practices that are empowering.

Mentioned below is a detailed low-down of three such industries (real estate, retail and automobile) where LoginWorks Software has employed the most talented predictive analysts and comprehensive behavioral marketing platforms in the industry. Let’s take a look.

Real Estate Industry Looks Past the Spray-And-Pray Marketing Tactic By Mining User Data.

A supremely competitive market that is to an extent unstructured too, the real estate industry needs to reap the advantageous benefits of data mining. And, we at LoginWorks Softwares understand this extremely well!

Our robust team of knowledge-driven analysts make sure that we predict future trends, process the old data and rank the areas using actionable predictive analytics techniques. By applying a long-term strategy to analyze the trend and to get hold of the influential factors that are invested in buying a property, our data warehouses excels in using classical techniques, such as Neural Network, C&R Tree, linear regression, Multilayer Perception Model and SPSS in order to uncover the hidden knowledge.

By using Big Data as the bedrock of our Predictive Marketing Platform, we help you zero-in on the best possible property available for your interest. Data from more than a dozen of reliable national and international resources to give you the most accurate and up-to-the minute data. Right from extracting a refined database of one’s neighbourhood insights to classic knowledge discovery of meaningful l techniques, our statisticians have proven accuracy. We scientifically predict your data by:

•    Understanding powerful insights that lead to property-buying decisions.
•    Studying properties and ranking them city-wise, based on their predictability of getting sold in the future.
•    Measuring trends at micro level by making use of Home Price Index, Market Strength Indicator, Automated Valuation Model and Investment analytics.

Our marketing platform consists of the mentioned below automated features:

Data Mining Techniques for Customer Relationship Management and Customer Retention in Retail Industry

Data mining to a retailer is what mining gold to a goldsmith would be! Priceless, to say the least. To understand the dynamics and suggestive patterns of customer habits, a retailer is always scouting for information to up his sales and generate future leads from existing and prospective consumers. Hence, sourcing your birth date information from your social media profiles to zooming upon your customer’s buying behaviour in different seasons.

For a retailer, data mining helps the customer information to transform a point of sale into a detailed understanding of (1) Customer Identification; (2) Customer Attraction; (3) Customer Retention; and (4) Customer Development. A retailer can score potential benefits by calculating Return on Investment (ROI) of its customers by:

•    Gaining customer loyalty and long-term association
•    Saving up on huge spend on non-targeted advertising and marketing costs
•    Accessing customer information, which leads to directly targeting the profitable customers
•    Extending product life cycle
•    Uncovering predictable buying patterns that leads to a decrease in spoilage, distribution costs and holding costs

Our specialised marketing team targets customers for retention by applying myriad levels of data mining techniques, in both technological and statistical perspective. We primarily make use of ‘basket’ analysis technique that unearths links between two distinct products and ‘visual’ mining techniques that helps in discovering the power of instant visual association and buying.

Role of Data Mining in Retail Sector

Spinning the Magic Wheel of Data Mining Algorithms in Automobile Industry of Today

Often called as the ‘industries of industries’. the automobile industry of today is robustly engrossed in constructing new plants, and extracting more production levels from existing plants. Like food manufacturing and drug companies, today, automakers are in an urgent need to build sophisticated data extraction processes to keep themselves all equipped for exuberantly expensive and reputation-damaging incidents. If a data analytics by Teradata Corp, a data analytics company, is to be believed then the “auto industry spends $45 billion to $50 billion a year on recalls and warranty claim”. A number potentially damaging for the automobile industry at-large, we reckon!

Hence, it becomes all the more imperative for an automobile company of repute to make use of enhanced methodology of data mining algorithms.

Our analysts would help you to spot insightful patterns, trends, rules, and relationships from scores and scores of information, which is otherwise next to impossible for the human eye to trace or process. Our avant-garde technicians understand that an automative manufacturing industry does not interact on one-to-one basis with the end consumers on a direct basis, hence we step into the picture and use our fully-integrated data mining feature to help you with the:

•    Supply chain procedure (pre-sales and post-sales services, inventory, orders, production plan).
•    Full A-Zee marketing facts and figures(dealers, business centers, social media handling, direct marketing tactics, etc).
•    Manufacturing detailing (car configurations/packages/options codes and description).
•    Customers’ inclination information (websites web-activities).

Impact of Big Data Analytics of Direct Vehicle Pricing

Bottom line

To wrap it all up, it is imperative to understand that the customer data is just as crucial for an actionable insights as your regular listings data. Behavioural data and predictive analysis is where the real deal lies, because at the end of the day it is all about targeting the right audience with the right context!

Move forward in your industry by availing LOGNWORKS SOFTWARES’ comprehensive, integrated, strategic and sophisticated Data Mining Services.

Source: http://www.loginworks.com/blogs/web-scraping-blogs/can-identify-buying-preferences-customers-using-data-mining-techniques/

Get Yourself Out Of A Scrape With Free Online Translation Tools

Most people who have been abroad or who at some stage have studied other languages tend to think of themselves as fair linguists. Granted, whilst abroad, they may very well be able to order lunch and refreshments and converse on a basic level, however, when faced with written documentation, they very often find their ability somewhat lacking.

The problem is that when speaking to someone in person, very often the context of the conversation with possibly a few accompanying hand gestures, generally overrides any deficiencies in vocabulary or grammar. When you actually see a language written grammatically though, simple conjugations often change recognised verbs, into something quite alien.

Faced then, with (usually important) documents from abroad, most people find themselves in a bit of a fix.

Luckily, the answer is easily within reach - you can easily access free translations online.

A cursory scan of any of the major search engines on the internet will come up with a great many free online translation sites. They are all very easy to use and it's really just a matter of typing in the desired word or phrase, selecting the source language and the target language and then pressing a button.

These free online translation tools, can be a real boon. They will literally translate whatever you put into them and can certainly give you a basic understanding of what a foreign document is trying to relate.

What they won't do, however, is give you a clear and precise translation because they literally translate word for word, the result will not be grammatical and will not necessarily make sense without having to piece together the text and frame it in the context of the subject matter.

Following the link above, however, will take you to a compilation of the best free translation resources. There is good reason to visit a site with a variety of translation engines. Every engine is slightly different and by having the use of more than one resource, you will be able to easily cross-check any words or phrases that don't quite come out sensibly. It's always good to have a fall back and It might just get you out of a real scrape.

One word of advice though: if the translations that you need to undertake are at all important to your company's business, or a mistranslation could have serious ramifications on your business were they to be at fault. You should always engage a professional translation company. Ultimately, there is nothing like a human translator to make perfect sense out of a linguistic muddle!

Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Get-Yourself-Out-Of-A-Scrape-With-Free-Online-Translation-Tools&id=706676

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Using Data Mining Services

In today's globalized marketplace Customer relationship management (CRM) is deemed as crucial business activity to compete efficiently and outdone the competition. CRM strategies heavily depend on how effectively you can use the customer information in meeting their needs and expectations which in turn leads to more profit.

Some basic questions include - what are their specific needs, how satisfied they are with your product or services, is there a scope of improvement in existing product/service and so on. For better CRM strategy you need a predictive data mining models fueled by right data and analysis. Let me give you a basic idea on how you can use Data mining for your CRM objective.

Basic process of CRM data mining includes:

1. Define business goal
2. Construct marketing database
3. Analyze data
4. Visualize a model
5. Explore model
6. Set up model & start monitoring

Let me explain last three steps in detail.

Visualize a Model:

Building a predictive data model is an iterative process. You may require 2-3 models in order to discover the one that best suit your business problem. In searching a right data model you may need to go back, do some changes or even change your problem statement.

In building a model you start with customer data for which the result is already known. For example, you may have to do a test mailing to discover how many people will reply to your mail. You then divide this information into two groups. On the first group, you predict your desired model and apply this on remaining data. Once you finish the estimation and testing process you are left with a model that best suits your business idea.

Explore Model:

Accuracy is the key in evaluating your outcomes. For example, predictive models acquired through data mining may be clubbed with the insights of domain experts and can be used in a large project that can serve to various kinds of people. The way data mining is used in an application is decided by the nature of customer interaction. In most cases either customer contacts you or you contact them.

Set up Model & Start Monitoring:

To analyze customer interactions you need to consider factors like who originated the contact, whether it was direct or social media campaign, brand awareness of your company, etc. Then you select a sample of users to be contacted by applying the model to your existing customer database. In case of advertising campaigns you match the profiles of potential users discovered by your model to the profile of the users your campaign will reach.

In either case, if the input data involves income, age and gender demography, but the model demands gender-to-income or age-to-income ratio then you need to transform your existing database accordingly.

For any queries related to Data mining CRM applications, please feel free to contact us. We would be pleased to answer each of your queries in detail.

Source:http://ezinearticles.com/?Customer-Relationship-Management-%28CRM%29-Using-Data-Mining-Services&id=4641198

Data Mining Is Useful for Business Application and Market Research Services

One day of data mining is an important tool in a market for modern business and market research to transform data into an information system advantage. Most companies in India that offers a complete solution and services for these services. The extraction or to provide companies with important information for analysis and research.

These services are primarily today by companies because the firm body search of all trade associations, retail, financial or market, the institute and the government needs a large amount of information for their development of market research. This service allows you to receive all types of information when needed. With this method, you simply remove your name and information filter.

This service is of great importance, because their applications to help businesses understand that it can perform actions and consumer buying trends and industry analysis, etc. There are business applications use these services:

1) Research Services
2) consumption behavior
3) E-commerce
4) Direct marketing
5) financial services and
6) customer relationship management, etc.

Benefits of Data mining services in Business

• Understand the customer need for better decision
• Generate more business
• Target the Relevant Market.
• Risk free outsourcing experience
• Provide data access to business analysts
• Help to minimize risk and improve ROI.
• Improve profitability by detect unusual pattern in sales, claims, transactions
• Major decrease in Direct Marketing expenses

Understanding the customer's need for a better fit to generate more business target market.To provide risk-free outsourcing experience data access for business analysts to minimize risk and improve return on investment.

The use of these services in the area to help ensure that the data more relevant to business applications. The different types of text mining such as mining, web mining, relational databases, data mining, graphics, audio and video industry, which all used in enterprise applications.

Source:http://ezinearticles.com/?Data-Mining-Is-Useful-for-Business-Application-and-Market-Research-Services&id=5123878

The Manifold Advantages Of Investing In An Efficient Web Scraping Service

Bitrake is an extremely professional and effective online data mining service that would enable you to combine content from several webpages in a very quick and convenient method and deliver the content in any structure you may desire in the most accurate manner. Web scraping may be referred as web harvesting or data scraping a website and is the special method of extracting and assembling details from various websites with the help from web scraping tool along with web scraping software. It is also connected to web indexing that indexes details on the online web scraper utilizing bot (web scraping tool).

The dissimilarity is that web scraping is actually focused on obtaining unstructured details from diverse resources into a planned arrangement that can be utilized and saved, for instance a database or worksheet. Frequent services that utilize online web scraper are price-comparison sites or diverse kinds of mash-up websites. The most fundamental method for obtaining details from diverse resources is individual copy-paste. Nevertheless, the objective with Bitrake is to create an effective web scraping software to the last element. Other methods comprise DOM parsing, upright aggregation platforms and even HTML parses. Web scraping might be in opposition to the conditions of usage of some sites. The enforceability of the terms is uncertain.

While complete replication of original content will in numerous cases is prohibited, in the United States, court ruled in Feist Publications v Rural Telephone Service that replication details is permissible. Bitrate service allows you to obtain specific details from the net without technical information; you just need to send the explanation of your explicit requirements by email and Bitrate will set everything up for you. The latest self-service is formatted through your preferred web browser and formation needs only necessary facts of either Ruby or Javascript. The main constituent of this web scraping tool is a thoughtfully made crawler that is very quick and simple to arrange. The web scraping software permits the users to identify domains, crawling tempo, filters and preparation making it extremely flexible. Every web page brought by the crawler is effectively processed by a draft that is accountable for extracting and arranging the essential content. Data scraping a website is configured with UI, and in
the full-featured package this will be easily completed by Bitrake. However, Bitrake has two vital capabilities, which are:

- Data mining from sites to a planned custom-format (web scraping tool)

- Real-time assessment details on the internet.

Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/software-articles/the-manifold-advantages-of-investing-in-an-efficient-web-scraping-service-5309569.html

Data Extraction, Web Screen Scraping Tool, Mozenda Scraper

Web Scraping

Web scraping, also known as Web data extraction or Web harvesting, is a software method of extracting data from websites. Web scraping is closely related and similar to Web indexing, which indexes Web content. Web indexing is the method used by most search engines. The difference with Web scraping is that it focuses more on the translation of unstructured content on the Web, characteristically in rich text format like that of HTML, into controlled data that can be analyzed stored and in a spreadsheet or database. Web scraping also makes Web browsing more efficient and productive for users. For example, Web scraping automates weather data monitoring, online price comparison, and website change recognition and data integration. 

This clever method that uses specially coded software programs is also used by public agencies. Government operations and Law enforcement authorities use data scrape methods to develop information files useful against crime and evaluation of criminal behaviors. Medical industry researchers get the benefit and use of Web scraping to gather up data and analyze statistics concerning diseases such as AIDS and the most recent strain of influenza like the recent swine flu H1N1 epidemic.

Data scraping is an automatic task performed by a software program that extracts data output from another program, one that is more individual friendly. Data scraping is a helpful device for programmers who have to generate a line through a legacy system when it is no longer reachable with up to date hardware. The data generated with the use of data scraping takes information from something that was planned for use by an end user.

One of the top providers of Web Scraping software, Mozenda, is a Software as a Service company that provides many kinds of users the ability to affordably and simply extract and administer web data. Using Mozenda, individuals will be able to set up agents that regularly extract data then store this data and finally publish the data to numerous locations. Once data is in the Mozenda system, individuals may format and repurpose data and use it in other applications or just use it as intelligence. All data in the Mozenda system is safe and sound and is hosted in a class A data warehouses and may be accessed by users over the internet safely through the Mozenda Web Console.

One other comparative software is called the Djuggler. The Djuggler is used for creating web scrapers and harvesting competitive intelligence and marketing data sought out on the web. With Dijuggles, scripts from a Web scraper may be stored in a format ready for quick use. The adaptable actions supported by the Djuggler software allows for data extraction from all kinds of webpages including dynamic AJAX, pages tucked behind a login, complicated unstructured HTML pages, and much more. This software can also export the information to a variety of formats including Excel and other database programs.

Web scraping software is a ground-breaking device that makes gathering a large amount of information fairly trouble free. The program has many implications for any person or companies who have the need to search for comparable information from a variety of places on the web and place the data into a usable context. This method of finding widespread data in a short amount of time is relatively easy and very cost effective. Web scraping software is used every day for business applications, in the medical industry, for meteorology purposes, law enforcement, and government agencies.

Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/databases-articles/data-extraction-web-screen-scraping-tool-mozenda-scraper-3568330.html