Wikidata

Wikidata:Property proposal/Amazon Standard Identification Number

< Wikidata:Property proposal

Amazon Standard Identification Number - ASIN edit

Originally proposed at Wikidata:Property proposal/Authority control

   Not done
DescriptionAmazons Identification Number for Books
RepresentsAmazon Standard Identification Number (Q1753278)
Data typeExternal identifier
ExampleHysteria and Enlightenment Mesmer, Mozart and Marie-Therese von Paradis (Q26247400) → B00JPGD07U
Formatter URLhttps://www.amazon.com/dp/$1
Motivation

Various Kindle books don't have an INSI but have a ASIN. It would be useful to have that data in Wikidata. ChristianKl (talk) 16:39, 9 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion
It costs money to register an ISBN. As such various people who are writing EBooks that they sell over their own market places don't buy an ISBN number. OCLC numbers exist for books in libraries but it doesn't seem possible to simply get a OCLC number for someone's ebook either. ChristianKl (talk) 20:57, 17 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I care about having the IDs for ebooks. I'm open about whether or not to allow the property to be used for other products as well. ChristianKl (talk) 20:57, 17 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Support as long as we're not violating CC-0 limitations by hosting those id's here. ArthurPSmith
In general facts can't be copyrighted. IDs are facts. Wikidata for example currently hosts CAS numbers for many Chemical even through the American Chemical Association claims that they have a copyright for CAS numbers and don't like the fact that ways to openly lookup what chemical is represented by what CAS number exist. In contrast I doubt that Amazon would have any problem with Wikidata hosting such numbers. What we can't do without Amazon's permission is copy the database of numbers with a bot. Databases are copyrighted and you can't simply copy a database as is. ChristianKl (talk) 20:57, 17 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

(talk) 17:17, 10 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

  •   Comment The Amazon Standard Identification Number (Q1753278) works for any product on Amazon, not only (e-)books. But it is not universal. I tested some products on amazon.de and amazon.com, and they were not found on the other shop, respectively, while others were. I have mixed feelings about including this. --Srittau (talk) 23:59, 10 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Oppose Until and unless the above issues are resolved. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:42, 16 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Amazon apply ASINs to anything they sell which does not have an ISBN - ebooks through to CDs or cheesegraters. For anything that does have an ISBN, they assign the ISBN-10 form as an ASIN. They are purely internal reference identifiers, and not guaranteed to be stable or automatically consistent across Amazon versions. I would be happy with using this as a publisher identifier for Amazon-published material (eg Kindle-original ebooks) but I'm a bit reluctant to endorse using it as a standard identifier for material that isn't unique to them. I would strongly oppose using this for, eg, an identifier on print books without ISBNs, which you do see sometimes - it's actively unhelpful as it will only resolve to this single commercial vendor. Andrew Gray (talk) 12:08, 17 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
What do you mean with the term "standard identifier"? If there are multiple identifies under which a book is known I think the ideal solution would be if all the identifiers are listed in Wikidata. I agree that OCLC numbers are more valuable than the ASINs and if someone only wants to put in the effort to put in one number they should put in the OCLC. There might be data users that find it valuable when Wikidata can provide lists of which OCLC number relates to which ASIN number. I would however also be okay with restricting this property to ebooks. ChristianKl (talk) 20:57, 17 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
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