[WEB4LIB] Re: We need an Internet Literary Database

[Matthew S. Burfeind]

At 02:18 PM 03/26/2000 -0800, Paul H. Gray wrote:
>Welcome to the real world  -- where every major advance or undertaking in
>recent memory has happened because someone saw a chance to make a profit.
>The kind of undertaking you are talking about will happen only/if/when some
>creative soul finds a way to make money from doing it.
>SO -
>This is a great idea -- some of of you creative/greedy souls get busy :-)

The ironic thing here is that the Internet Movies Database was NOT created
as a for-profit venture.  Far from it, in fact.  The original databse was
developed from FAQ files created by users of the usenet group
rec.arts.movies.  I was an avid user of the database in its pre-web days,
when it used an e-mail interface (which apparently still exists).

Check out http://us.imdb.com/Help/Oweek/history for the full story.
-Matthew Burfeind





>
>> On Sat, 25 Mar 2000, Hanan Cohen wrote:
>>
>> [...]
>> > The web needs an Internet Literary Database, similar to the Internet
>> > Movie Database, so we can link to books without looking like we're
>> > trying to sell you something.
>>
>> The irony bere being that IMDB is run by Amazon.com.
>>


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
MATTHEW S. BURFEIND
Boston Architectural Center
617.585.0235
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~