So look, it’s the morning after the night before and I’ve decided to take down the links to the JSON and RSS feeds.
In general don’t feel it ‘wrong’ for someone to link to them directly, after all they were all listed in a javascript file on the BBC News Website (or derived by changing easily guessable paths in the URL). That’s how I discovered them, it’s been years since I had access to the BBC News Webservers so there was no ‘insider knowledge’ of paths etc.
BUT yes I do admit that because I personally know the licensing position of this data it wasn’t something that I should have done.
And despite the fact that I warned on the blog post that the data wasn’t licensed for off-site use, I take the point that it was little irresponsible to encourage people to do it anyway. Feel free to ridicule me on your blog posts, mash-up photos of me with egg on face, etc etc.
I do, however, still maintain that if I hadn’t posted the urls, it’s highly likely that someone else would have as they were put into the public ether by the BBC on their site.
But please, kids, don’t try those urls at home. They’re bad for you.
(BTW I decided to take this down after a night’s sleep on it, the BBC didn’t ask me to take it down)