Zotero and excessive download

purwoko
Some jurnal/database did not allow to do excessive download.
'Systematic' or 'excessive' downloading is defined as a deliberate attempt to copy or distribute a whole or significant part of an electronic resource using 'robots' or any such software, or any manual means designed for wholesale infringement, which results in a vendor licence violation on the part of the University and/or its Library (http://www.lib.cuhk.edu.hk/Common/Reader/News/ShowNews.jsp?Nid=4353&Pid=18&Version=0&Cid=125)

My question is: is zotero one of the excessive download software?
  • adamsmith
    No. Zotero is not and does not resemble a robot.

    Depending on how a database is set up, you may be able to use Zotero to facilitate behavior that violates vendor licenses, but since normally it's not possible to download more than 25-50 items at once, that would still require significant manual labor to download the whole or a significant part of any database and, more importantly, you'd know that you're doing this, so it would be you, not Zotero, infringing on the license.
  • purwoko
    from this information http://www.senecac.on.ca/library/Technical_Help/, the library ask to disable Zotero first, before access the libary journal.
  • adamsmith
    That information was inaccurate back then and the underlying issue has been addressed.
    May I ask what exactly your concern is? Have you had any problems?
  • purwoko
    I am a librarian, one of the journals that we subscribe has been blocked related with excessive download. As a librarian I do Zotero workshops and i afraid if it caused by Zotero.

    Thanks Adam
  • purwoko
    *i am a zotero lover* :)
  • adamsmith
    presumably your IT folks can track those excessive downloads to a user?
    But no this isn't a Zotero issue -
    (the problem that did occur at Seneca was almost certainly this: https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/28505/zotero-doing-a-duplicate-http-request-2090368446/ and only made excessive requests to the proxy, never to the database)
  • purwoko
    thanks adam, I will inform it to the IT department.
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