Violation of TPDb Terms of Service

[N3rdP1um23]

Hello,

I wanted to reach out on behalf of TPDb and kindly ask that this repository and or functionality that automatically parses content be removed. After reviewing this repository, we've found it to be in direct violation of our terms of service.

As outlined in our terms of service, particularly in the section "Your Use of the Services," points 4 and 5 explicitly state that users are not allowed to access or search the services in any automated manner other than through the provided interfaces, nor are they permitted to scrape user content from the services.

The provided script seems to be designed to scrape posters from TPDb, which is in direct violation of our terms of service. This script programmatically accesses the site and retrieves posters and associated information without utilizing any official interfaces approved by us. This is a direct infringement of points 4 and 5 mentioned in our terms of service.

Additionally, there has been no prior dialogue with TPDb or consent granted for such automated access or scraping endeavors.

After reviewing the provided script, it has become apparent that it operates in a manner that contradicts our terms of service.

Therefore, we kindly request that you address this violation by either modifying the script to align with our terms of service or remove the repository.

Thank you for your attention to this issue.

[jl94x4]

Hello,

I wanted to reach out on behalf of TPDb and kindly ask that this repository and or functionality that automatically parses content be removed. After reviewing this repository, we've found it to be in direct violation of our terms of service.

As outlined in our terms of service, particularly in the section "Your Use of the Services," points 4 and 5 explicitly state that users are not allowed to access or search the services in any automated manner other than through the provided interfaces, nor are they permitted to scrape user content from the services.

The provided script seems to be designed to scrape posters from TPDb, which is in direct violation of our terms of service. This script programmatically accesses the site and retrieves posters and associated information without utilizing any official interfaces approved by us. This is a direct infringement of points 4 and 5 mentioned in our terms of service.

Additionally, there has been no prior dialogue with TPDb or consent granted for such automated access or scraping endeavors.

After reviewing the provided script, it has become apparent that it operates in a manner that contradicts our terms of service.

Therefore, we kindly request that you address this violation by either modifying the script to align with our terms of service or remove the repository.

Thank you for your attention to this issue.

Hi, I'm not the maintainer of the script, but I do have a few questions.

I find this tool highly useful for doing something that I would already be doing manually, albeit very time consuming doing so manually, I would ask what would you propose to be appropriate that would allow this tool to remain available for use?

I see you have already blocked this script from working with TPDB as I now get "Failed to retrieve the page. Status code: 403" when I try to add a link set to my Plex.

I use(d) this tool primarily to save time, as manually uploading sets to my Plex is time consuming, and I'm not sure why this tool offers anything different to what can already be done manually, just much faster. Further to this, Mediux (a rival site) have openly offered support for this tool in the past. There is also K0meta where one could create a yml file full of URLS to your site, and then K0meta would parse these and add them to Plex, which would class as automation, this is seemingly being allowed still, and only this tool is not?

I would urge you to reconsider your stance on this, or potentially working with @bbrown430 and coming to a resolution, maybe making it longer between applying posters manually (currently 7 seconds). Is this something you would entertain?

Thanks for reading and I hope you come to a sensible decision and agreement regarding this tool @N3rdP1um23.

[morpheus2n2]

Hello,

I wanted to reach out on behalf of TPDb and kindly ask that this repository and or functionality that automatically parses content be removed. After reviewing this repository, we've found it to be in direct violation of our terms of service.

As outlined in our terms of service, particularly in the section "Your Use of the Services," points 4 and 5 explicitly state that users are not allowed to access or search the services in any automated manner other than through the provided interfaces, nor are they permitted to scrape user content from the services.

The provided script seems to be designed to scrape posters from TPDb, which is in direct violation of our terms of service. This script programmatically accesses the site and retrieves posters and associated information without utilizing any official interfaces approved by us. This is a direct infringement of points 4 and 5 mentioned in our terms of service.

Additionally, there has been no prior dialogue with TPDb or consent granted for such automated access or scraping endeavors.

After reviewing the provided script, it has become apparent that it operates in a manner that contradicts our terms of service.

Therefore, we kindly request that you address this violation by either modifying the script to align with our terms of service or remove the repository.

Thank you for your attention to this issue.

I to would ask you to reconsider and or start a dialog with @bbrown430 about this script, my main reason being its doing a job that is very similar to what the TPDB team promised years ago they would do (Plex plugin of sorts) and a community member has ended up solving this :D.

While I love browsing the site being able to very quickly and efficiently utilize the awesome posters from my favourite creator is a god send.

[bbrown430]

Hi @N3rdP1um23,

First and foremost apologies for breaking the TOS, was never my intention to act in a malicious way. I, along with the community benefit greatly from the services TPDb provides, and I don't take that for granted!

Obviously, web scraping is never the preferred method of parsing content, and I firstly checked to see if there was an API for TPDb. Upon learning there is not one (or at least a publicly available one) I resorted to web scraping. Is there a timeline for which an API will be made available, so I can rewrite this script to utilize that instead?

As other people in this thread have said, this script fills a void that is not currently supported by TPDb, which is bulk importing of posters onto your Plex server. The task of uploading an entire MCU set for instance, using the official interfaces, will realistically take minutes of monotonous repetitive steps, whereas with this script, it is more or less a one click solution.

I recall seeing a similar repository which also had a takedown request, which got circumvented once they pointed out that they were not "web scraping" but scraping from a statically downloaded HTML page. While I understand the difference between the two, it seems like a very fine line in the sand. While I could certainly rewrite this script to act in the same way, it seems like obfuscation for obfuscations sake, and ultimately just hurts the user experience.

Again, apologies for the misunderstanding, and I really do appreciate the resources that TPDb provides. I do hope that we can come to an agreement, as it is evident from this thread and the stars on this repo that community members do greatly benefit from an automated solution to Plex poster uploading.

[jl94x4]

@N3rdP1um23

[N3rdP1um23]

Hey @bbrown430,

Thank you for your response and for understanding our position regarding the terms of service. We appreciate your acknowledgment of the issue and your willingness to comply. Apologies for the delay in response, I was out of office for the last little while.

We understand that web scraping often becomes a workaround when official APIs are unavailable. However, our terms of service clearly prohibit any automated access or scraping, regardless of the method, as it affects the integrity and performance of our services. Our primary concern is to ensure that all interactions with TPDb are conducted in a manner that is both secure and sustainable for the community.

While we acknowledge the need for bulk importing features and understand the convenience your script offers, it's important to emphasize that any form of scraping is still a violation of our terms of service. We do have future plans to incorporate an API into the platform, although we do not have a specific timeline for its release at this moment.

We encourage collaboration and constructive feedback from our community. If you have specific feature requests or ideas on how we can better serve the needs of users like yourself, we invite you to share them with us through the appropriate channels.

In the meantime, we still ask that the repository and any related functionality be removed or modified to fully comply with our terms of service.

Thanks for your understanding and cooperation.

[StudioEtrange]

TPDb is not interresting anymore reading their TOS and their "no API" way of thinking. I would recommand to use any possible alternavtive.

[tpdb-james]

Hey!

We understand that an API is important to many users, and it's definitely something we plan on offering in the future. Right now, we have a few other priorities we're focusing on, though we're in no way opposed to it - it's just not at the top of our list at the moment.

Hope that helps clear things up! 🙂

[tonywied17]

Made it work again anyway gang. Hard to stop scraping, so many methods that even large corporations use. At least we aren't bots I guess. Literally no difference between browsing the site and downloading and using this tool - you even still have to use the site to get the appropriate poster/url. #FMHY.NET

you can download all the fixes on my fork at: https://github.com/tonywied17/plex-poster-set-helper

which has even more features then before!

[tonywied17]

https://harmful.cat-v.org/economics/intellectual_property/