They're also tightened up the API in various ways, and renamed it the
"Amazon.com Product Advertising API." Although I know of no case when
Amazon has shut down a library, it would be hard for any to claim
their site had "as their principal purpose advertising and marketing
the Amazon Site and driving sales of products and services on the
Amazon Site."

I think it's a terrible mistake for them. Their marginal cost is zero;
they don't need to do this. Data openness was a key factor in Amazon's
rise. And that was when thee were no other options. With viable other
options just emerging—Open Library, Google, at least—now is hardly the
time to make it less attractive.

Tim

On Mon, May 11, 2009 at 9:40 AM, Jonathan Rochkind <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> The Amazon products API keeps changing it's name, and has just been changed
> to Amazon "Product Advertising API" -- it's the one you use to look up books
> in Amazon and get metadata for them, though.
>
> It looks from an email I got from Amazon that ss of August 15th, you'll need
> to cryptographically sign requests to this API, to have them responded to.
> It looks like kind of a pain.
>
> I think a bunch of people on this list may be using this API. Beware.
> Instructions for how to cryptographically sign requests the way they want
> can be found here:
>
> http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/AWSECommerceService/latest/DG/Query_QueryAuth.html
> http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/AWSECommerceService/latest/DG/rest-signature.html
>
>
>
> Like I said, it's looking like a pain to me. There are lots of details to
> get right. If you URI-escape not _exactly_ the same way they do, it's not
> going to work. Etc.
>
> Jonathan
>



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