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There have been lawsuits where the company running the site-being-scraped sued the scraper and won. So while it's technically possible, there can be legal issue
by troymc 11y ago
There have been lawsuits where the company running the site-being-scraped sued the scraper and won. So while it's technically possible, there can be legal issues.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_scraping#Legal_issues https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_scraping#Legal_issues
- kuschku 11y agoIf I republish, yes. If I just download a site – for local use, or similar cases – it’s not an issue. And if I provide a scraper where the user customly has to enter the URL, it’s also technically just a very advanced webproxy, and also okay.
- troymc 11y agoThat is incorrect. Even if you don't republish the data, the scraping alone can be a violation of the site's Terms of Service, and you can be sued (and lose). See the Wikipedia article I linked above. Think about it from the point of view of the site being scraped. Suddenly your webserver is being slammed with traffic that's way beyond what any human would cause. It's costing you bandwidth and compute resources. You have every right to say no, scraping is not allowed (in your Terms of Service). It's then up to a court to decide if those Terms of Service are legally binding. Some courts have decided that yes, they are.
- kuschku 11y agoAnd where I am, courts decided that no, ToS are never binding. ToS are effectively worthless.