Unofficial Reddit API

Anon Coder@discuss.online to Technology@lemmy.world – 161 points –
GitHub - anoncoder1337/UnofficialRedditAPI: an unofficial REST API for Reddit that mimics the official Reddit API by scraping data from Reddit. This project aims to provide an alternative way to access Reddit data without incurring high API costs.
github.com

I am making a Unofficial Reddit API, which mimics the official one.

Its early days, but I would like to have a discussion here about it since my post was blocked on reddit(of course).

Let me know what you think of the project, if you have any input, let me know.

108

You are viewing a single comment

Wouldn't those other options be C&D'd?

*I am a layman

This is likely to be C&D'd as well if it ever reaches the point where it does anything useful (remember, reddit doesn't need grounds that would hold up in court to send a C&D).

Don't worry, it won't be a problem. I have taken reasonable measures to ensure my anonymity. and also you can't really kill free/libre software easily anyways.

You are using github so i doubt it is really the case.

It's only mirrored on GitHub.

I know, he is also hosted on a german association with the same id. Both github and the association will have to follow the laws anyways.

I suspect that any of the methods proposed here would be prone to a C&D, but IMO the safest legally would probably be the RSS method (not a lawyer though). Reddit's RSS feeds are public, documented, and available without the need for private APIs, authentication, or an API key, so I don't see how they could claim that a wrapper is unauthorised/illegal. Documenting their private API however seems like a gray area. Google LLC v. Oracle America, Inc. found that APIs are copyrightable, but this use may constitute fair use.