infochimps.org - help
faq

FAQ

How does Infochimps work?

There are three facets to Infochimps, community curation, user uploading and marketplace.

1. Community Curation – In order to have a comprehensive collection of datasets that are discoverable and useful, members of the Infochimps community curate datasets. This includes fixing mistakes, improving descriptions and pointing to other sources. See Share Data for more information
2. User Uploading – Users upload their datasets, or datasets that they deem useful, building the commons. See Share Data for more information.
3. Marketplace – Infochimps provides a marketplace for users to buy and sell data. See Sell Data to learn more.

Where does this data come from?

The datasets you find are not created or researched by Infochimps. All of the datasets on Infochimps are added by the Infochimps community.

What can I do with the data?

Refer to the license associated to the dataset. Licenses are clearly marked on each dataset, and every dataset should have a license.

I think I found a copyright violation, what do I do?

Report it by sending an email to copyright@infochimps.org

To make a claim, please provide us with the following:

1. A physical or electronic signature of the copyright owner or the person authorized to act on its behalf;
2. A description of the copyrighted work claimed to have been infringed;
3. A description of the infringing material and information reasonably sufficient to permit Infochimps to locate the material;
4. Your contact information, including your address, telephone number, and email;
5. A statement by you that you have a good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law; and
6. A statement that the information in the notification is accurate, and, under the pains and penalties of perjury, that you are authorized to act on behalf of the copyright owner.

Claims can be sent to copyright@infochimps.org or Infochimps, Inc., PO Box 302887, Austin, TX 78703. Contact the agent designated to receive and act on copyright violations under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

How do you guys make money?

Infochimps only makes money when vendors do by taking a commission on the sales of datasets. For more information on selling data, see Sell Data

How do I share or sell data?

First of all, to either share or sell data, you need to have an Infochimps account.
You can share data by sending your data through email, FTP, or upload. See Share Data for more details.

In order to sell data, you need to sign up for an account and agree to the Data Supplier Agreement. Then you can upload your data and set your price. See Sell Data for more details.

Why do I have to agree to the Data Supplier Agreement?

The Data Supplier Agreement is necessary as it allows us to legally redistribute your data and charge people for it.

Something’s broke, how can I let you know about it?

Click the feedback tab at the right of your window with the Infochimps website, by the scroll bar.

What data is being sold from MySpace?

Infochimps sells data from MySpace. Many of these datasets are derived datasets that lack any user information whatsoever. Datasets like number of application adds for a 3 month period or total word count are only aggregates, not containing usernames or ID’s. The only user information are in the daily raw dumps, in which every piece of data that is on Infochimps is public and also available on http://myspace.collecta.com/ through MySpace’s real-time feed.