Commercial web scraping - is it stealing?

by hoop on 10/13/2010, 1:24 PM with 6 comments
  • by nopal on 10/13/2010, 5:45 PM

    Aren't sites able to prevent this type of thing through a prominent terms of use link on every page? (Ticketmaster 2003, Cairo v. CrossMedia Services)

    Is it that this is still a legal gray area, or is it that big companies can roll over small companies and individuals?

    Ticketmaster - http://itlaw.wikia.com/wiki/Ticketmaster_v._Tickets.com

    Cairo v. CossMedia - http://itlaw.wikia.com/wiki/Cairo_v._CrossMedia_Services

  • by wpeterson on 10/13/2010, 7:32 PM

    There's a lot to be concerned about here for anyone who provides a data mining backed web application or service.

    At PatientsLikeMe patients are trading use of their information for free access to data analysis tools and social community.

  • by gamble on 10/13/2010, 11:24 PM

    It's almost always going to violate the site's TOS, so if you're a business that depends on regularly scraping sites without permission, prepare to change your business model or be sued. (eg. Octopart vs Mouser and Digikey)

  • by AndrewDucker on 10/13/2010, 4:52 PM

    So, when are we going to get a law making it illegal to violate robots.txt?