A Real Estate site that I worked on has a national MLS. The MLS site has an text export for the listings. We had a nightly script login to the site, create the export then import the listings into the DB on the site. It recently stopped working and upon checking the MLS site, we noticed the issue. The MLS site added CAPTCHA to the export page.

The page was already behind password protection and the export link contained the ID of the company so they know the IDs of any abusers. No, we have to add CAPTCHA and stop it.

I understand the MLS companies position of not wanting automated scripts hammering away at their site but there are other options such as limiting exports to X per day or per hour, even giving each company a specific developer API that would let us get at the listings without jumping through hoops.

I would think that access to your data would be part of the basic service. Funny thing is they sell a product that will download your listings and photos nightly. Guess too many folks like me were cutting into the profit.