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Subject: 
Re: LEGO instructions
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.lego.direct
Date: 
Fri, 15 Sep 2006 22:42:26 GMT
Viewed: 
11451 times
  
In lugnet.lego.direct, David Eaton wrote:
In lugnet.lego.direct, Ross Crawford wrote:
I poll from Australia, roughly once a month.

Hm. given what you're talking about, it doesn't seem terribly likely that they'd
shut down your IP based on that alone-- unless your polls are REALLY hitting
them hard. But I'm assuming you're doing something like:

for each set in the Lugnet Database:
- Skip the set if its release date is prior to (say) 1995.
- Skip the set if you already have a record for it
- Do a search on Lego for the set number. If a result comes back, save it, but
don't actually download the PDF.

But maybe you're actually testing each PDF to verify that the links are still
valid?

It's more complicated than that, because the PDFs are stored by the 7 digit LEGO
number, not the set number. Basically I scan the header of all files in a
certain range (about 1 million), and if it is a PDF I check against my database,
downloading it to my hard drive if I don't already have it. I then have to
manually go through all new PDFs, to find out which set they are for.

I do not store the PDFs on Northstar, and I don't want to. There would I'm
sure be legal issues doing that, and with 9.5GB so far, I'd certainly have to
pay more for my hosting at Northstar.

Oh, I wasn't meaning that you'd STORE them at NorthStar, but that as a fix
(albeit a very bad one), you could set up a link that used the NS server to pull
FROM Lego (assuming that NS's IP's aren't blocked), then immediately deliver the
file to yourself (assuming that NS isn't blocking your IP). And as soon as the
NS server is done transferring the file, away it goes. But yes, that's possibly
also disallowed, since technically your server would be serving Lego's material
which they've asked people not to do. (But so long as the link isn't *public*,
you're ok)

Unfortunately, Northstar runs Windows Server, and setting up any kind of
complicated server-side stuff is probably beyond what I get for my hosting. And
besides, I really don't want to jump through hoops to do this - it's not that
important to me. If my polling IS the reason, and they don't want to negotiate
about it, I'd just like to know, and I will stop it (which I have done anyway
until it's resolved one way or the other).

If the polling is the reason they have blocked my IP (and a large range of
other IPs it would seem), I would just like to know. I would be happy to
discuss with them the possibility of updating my database in a "sanctioned"
way. But blocking a large range of IPs because of it seems to be like driving
a nail with a 10 ton truck.

Agreed. It does seem rather... wrong of them to do. Of course, if they're
blocking a wide range of IP's, it could also be unrelated to your polling in
particular, which may be the case, depending on the order of events. I guess
there's not much way to know unless Lego wants to chime in...

Indeed. Interestingly, I just got a reply from LEGO, saying they could not
duplicate the problem, I think probably because the first line of support
doesn't understand the problem. The dialogue continues...

ROSCO



Message has 3 Replies:
  Re: LEGO instructions
 
(...) Ahh. Yeah, I could see that as being potentially red-flagging, if they're getting a million hits in a short period of time. I was definitely thinking smaller scale than that. (...) Heh, the inevitable 1st level of tech support :) It will be (...) (18 years ago, 16-Sep-06, to lugnet.lego.direct)
  Re: LEGO instructions
 
(...) Ahh. Yeah, I could see that as being potentially red-flagging, if they're getting a million hits in a short period of time. I was definitely thinking smaller scale than that. (...) Heh, the inevitable 1st level of tech support :) It will be (...) (18 years ago, 16-Sep-06, to lugnet.lego.direct)
  Re: LEGO instructions
 
What email address are you using to contact them? I'll moan too bcause it's not working for me and I'm not doing anything that might offend them. Kerry (18 years ago, 16-Sep-06, to lugnet.lego.direct)

Message is in Reply To:
  Re: LEGO instructions
 
(...) Hm. given what you're talking about, it doesn't seem terribly likely that they'd shut down your IP based on that alone-- unless your polls are REALLY hitting them hard. But I'm assuming you're doing something like: for each set in the Lugnet (...) (18 years ago, 15-Sep-06, to lugnet.lego.direct)

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