While pondering the sources of data that would be used in creating an integrated, yet truly portable reputation widget, I find myself wondering who actually owns the feedback and comments associated with a particular merchant account. We contend that during the sign up at a given site, the user is effectively licensing their reputation to the exchange site and giving them the right to help maintain and alter it. This is, however, an implied non-exclusive license and in no way transfers ownership to the exchange site.

Often, this is not an issues since most of the more progressive sites have published generous and robust APIs to access the data. However, there are certain sites that (for a myriad of reasons) have yet to publish a way to directly access their data. Any Internet-savvy individual knows that not having an API is not a dead end… only a hurdle to overcome. The beauty of the Internet is that it is a self-arranging structured beast, meaning that there is some intelligence implied in the simplest of web sites. This structured intelligence can easily be transversed and its associated data extracted. A practice well known as “Screen Scraping.”

But, because it can be done programmatically does not make it ethically or legally sound. Or does it? Now I am no tort lawyers, but given that the user has granted this non-exclusive license for their reputation data to the exchange site, they have every right to collect, update and take the data with them at any time. Just as these exchange sites plainly state in their terms of service that they can terminate the relationship with the user for any reason (often confiscating any unsettled transactions and fees), there is a reciprocity in rights that allows the user to do the same. The problem is that while this is true, the users are rarely enabled to do so and are effectively locked into the agreement.

We are simply enabling users to control what is rightfully theirs and are ready to fight for the consumers right to make their reputation theirs to do with what they will.

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