Time to turn off the API?

I just came across this:

Item: Booru syncer.

Description: This will keep your booru up to date by syncing tags and images from booru's that have API support such as gelbooru, danbooru, konachan, etc. For example, if you wish to have a k-on booru the syncer would sync 15K images to your booru then afterwards hourly scans for new pictures. The syncer has an max of 50K images for the basic version and 250K for our paid version.

Price: 20$ Set-up then 6$ per half year.

It's from a place calling itself "Booru Project".

The owners are effectively making profits from Danbooru's community efforts, and are wasting bandwidth and server resources without giving back anything at all.

Thoughts on this?

That seems pretty ill manared of them.

Perhaps another solution would simply be to find out and block these syncer servers from connecting.

Then again, I don't really want to dive into something I don't completely understand and know all the details about.

Yeah, I think it would be much better to block malicious users rather than turn off the service altogether. Afterall, legitimate third party users that provide useful services, such as Piespy's visual similarty search use the API to function.

On the other hand if we did turn it off, they'd just scrape the pages themselves which would be less efficient and waste more bandwidth.

No one is going to pay for this. I hardly get any account registrations as is. It seems extremely implausible that someone would be willing to pay an additional $12 a year on top of the base fee for something they could do for free by visiting 2-3 sites.

That being said, it's unlikely I'll do anything to stop this. If people want to pay for this kind of service, that's their folly.

If the API were to be disabled, how would deliciously useful scripts like the one in forum #48229 function?

Hi, i am the so called i'll mannered owner of this site.

Just to make something clear, what Mr. topic starter posted is an additional feature we offer for people who want to fill up their booru. Syncing and generating thumbnails cost alot of CPU power from my servers, thats why i charge people for it. The b/w being used is not that much really, and i do thank Albert for offering his services. I'm also creating my own booru archive so i will only be syncing once from danbooru, minimizing b/w usage even more.

The booru project has been created primary to allow people to create their own booru's for free, the revenue i get from the ads don't even make up 10% of the server cost.