Quoting mediadogg:

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Quoting Dr. Killpatient:

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IMDB is also known for embedding subtle errors in their cast & crew listings to catch such data mining.

I wonder how / where they get THEIR data? 

I don't know how it works now but IMDb started out as a user built database, much like ours. I used to contribute a lot myself during those early years.

Quoting mediadogg:

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Can you legally enforce rights management when you give away your data on a public facing web page?

Well, probably not, but just the thought of going up against Amazon (who owns IMDb) in court would probably deter most people.

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I wonder how / where they get THEIR data? 

Can you legally enforce rights management when you give away your data on a public facing web page?

The imdb - at least partially - is also done by users for free. If you see wrong or at least missing data in a profile there, you can create an accound and enter.

But for me it felt that there is nothing like a "community" behind like here, what means: There are users with more rights which could decline your corrections without any reason.

I think we all experience misspelling in here also! And there are countless of them in the imdb. An some obvious mistakes when they use an actor with a similar name to make him/her the one playing in the movie "credited as".

When the site started nearly 20 years ago it was quite small with a lot of enthusiastic poeple, but as the number of releases since then exploded, they had to find ways to get their data directly from studios. And as even the studios and/or media companies have misspellings in the credits, iMo the community here cares much more about erasing duplicates, combining name versions and correcting misspellings.

Wow, very nice! 

Quoting DarklyNoon:

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This looks amazing, do you make this available for others too?

If I shared my work with others, I would violate IMDb's terms the same way DVD Profiler would, I believe, because my tool imports heavily from IMDb.  Also, my tool doesn't have user submissions, so I have to manually enter every title myself.  There is also no UPC scanning, disc scanning, etc.  What's more, my tool still relies on DVD Profiler to obtain disc detail such as region, studio, wide screen, etc.  If DVD Profiler is gone, I have to manually enter those too.  The big advantage is that since I make it myself, I can put in whatever features I want, such as Leonard Martin's reviews, Pauline Kael's reviews, etc.  And of course I don't have to worry about DVD Profiler going away.

I also have to pay recurring charges for this.  This tool is run on Microsoft Office, which costs $100 a year.  The online version is stored on my private website that costs another $100 a year.  So this is not for everyone.  I only decided to do this because my movie collection is important enough for me to invest such time and effort.  I started doing this in 2014, so I've already put in a lot of time and money on it.  If you totally do it yourself, expect a similar level of investment.  Or hope for another good commercial disc catalog program, which is unlikely.

When you buy streaming movies from places like Vudu or Google, you already get a "library" that is essentially a catalog, where you can sort, filter, wishlist, etc.  So you have no need for a separate catalog program and don't have to spend extra time managing a catalog.  That's another reason why streaming is popular.

Quoting Magmadrag:

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Quoting movie_madness:

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I believe, because my tool imports heavily from IMDb

But if you import from IMDb without any "control", you import all of their misspellings and mistakes, too?

No doubt about that your tool looks nice and respect for the work you have done.

But I am still one of those "DVDProfiler-Guys", typing cast & crew for one series after another. This way I started to dislike at least parts of the IMDb. Just imagine: You are at the cast & crew of one episode of a series, typing one actor and you find out that you allready have someone with a similiar spelling. So you want to prove (or not) via IMDb and have to find out that they don't have half of the cast (or list some actors credited in other episodes but not in the one your are looking for) and even not half of the crew.

As I mentioned before: It is also done by users (at least the time I remember entering data at IMDb), and useres make mistakes. As IMDB is "oversized", I am not sure if there is half as much of control as we have on this site.

And it is much more work (if it is even possible) to do corrections on IMDb. I had to find out that sometimes they have two (or more) spellings of one person as separate actors (no "common name" thread like here), and without a complete "overwork" of their data, the load of wrong data is growing there.

That's why I am still here, trying do to corrections as much as possible - not getting any denial without a smart explanation.

IMDb has more data than DVD Profiler does or ever will, since more people enter data for IMDb than DVD Profiler.  Every time I add discs into DVD Profiler, I see empty or incomplete cast & crew.  If I have to do manual entries every time, I may as well do it with a tool of my own design where I can design whatever I want.

If I see errors, I correct them in my tool, not on IMDb.  I've seen errors on IMDb that haven't been corrected for years.  But that doesn't affect me because I don't "use" IMDb per se.  I import data from it and have my own "copy" of the data at my disposal.

I make my tool also because of some of DVD Profiler's shortcomings, such as lack of unicode support.  One big shortcoming (to me anyway) of DVD Profiler is its disc-based structure, rather than movie-based.  My tool organizes my collection as movies, and links each movie to a disc. That works much better for me.  That way also makes integration with IMDb easier.

The "mobile" component of DVD Profiler is also woefully inadequate.  You have to put an entire copy of your collection into your smart device.  That's not exactly what mobile means.  A truly mobile experience means your data are on the cloud and accessible from multiple devices.  That's how Collectorz does it.  But that software has its own problems for me.  As I said, I've used practically all commercial tools and ended up having to make my own.

Quoting TheMadMartian:

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Quoting movie_madness:

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Quoting DarklyNoon:

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This looks amazing, do you make this available for others too?

If I shared my work with others, I would violate IMDb's terms the same way DVD Profiler would, I believe, because my tool imports heavily from IMDb.

I'm a little late to this but I don't think he meant sharing your database data, just your database design.  I use Microsoft Office but don't have the programming skills to create something this nice so would definitely be interested in the design.

Sharing my design would mean sharing how I obtain data from IMDb, which I'm also reluctant to do because the legality of doing so is also not so clear cut, due to IMDB's usage terms.

My app requires Microsoft SQL Server when it runs, so unless you have that set up at your end, you can't even open my app.  In short, my app is not easily distributable due to various reasons.  It is not designed to be distributed anyway.

To understand my design, you would need to be proficient in relational database first (which is a college sophomore-level subject).  My app and DVD Profiler are basically "database applications" that rely much on the fundamental principles of relational database, which include topics like indices, data types, data structures, referential integrity, relationship, etc.

I can give you a glimpse of what my app does by way of a video or two (here is a brief video of how my tool retrieves IMDb cast and crew).  But this is no way to show you truly what my design entails.