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Re:Scraping 241 UK council planning portals – 2.6M decisions... by jaggs on Tuesday April 28, 2026 @05:35AM (#47932252)
I would try and go open source as fast as possible before a legal letter land on your desk. Then worry about the commercialisation. Also I have a feeling you could charge SERIOUS coin for some app for property developers based around this. But someone is almost certainly going to come at you because, you know, us Brits hate clever clogs.
Re:Scraping 241 UK council planning portals – 2.6M decisions... by mebkorea on Tuesday April 28, 2026 @06:03AM (#47932414)
Yeah, unfortunately you are not wrong about the national tradition of wanting to pull down clever-clogs...

The open source angle is something I'm increasingly considering, especially after a local government IT person made a fair point on this thread about the strain it causes. It won't fix the scraping load directly, but might frame the project as public-interest rather than attempting to make a bit of extra money. Tbh, the real value is probably in serving property developers and consultants, not emailing £19 PDFs to homeowners. Got a lot to think about.

Re:Scraping 241 UK council planning portals – 2.6M decisions... by jaggs on Tuesday April 28, 2026 @06:18AM (#47932500)
I think you're absolutely on the right track. It's all a matter of optics. Open source gives you the higher ground for the jobsworths. Meanwhile you can put together some kind of cool package to approach property developers with.