Assignment #1
Due by midnight, February 20, 2009
You are contemplating creating a web site about the movie industry, particularly about box office returns. Like others in this market you are interested in providing some information for free on the site and charging for other analysis. To be competitive you feel you must provide some historical data. You are considering two sources for this information:
http://www.the-numbers.com/
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/
In addition to scraping information from the box office return sections for use in populating your site with historic data, you are also considering re-using information from their daily box office return charts for weekday reports and only producing your own analysis on the weekends.
Your assignment is to write a letter to a potential investor who has expressed concern over possible legal issues, setting out any potential risks to re-using data from these sites and explaining how you intend to structure your use of their information to limit potential legal claims against the site. Please consider the subjects addressed in class 3 (except privacy) in conducting your analysis.
Please approach this as a persuasive letter, not a research paper. Length limit for this assignment: 3 pages, double-spaced, normal font.