> Are there legal implications to scraping a site that actively tries to prevent bots from scraping it? I mean, if the data is publicly accessible on the web, c

> Are there legal implications to scraping a site that actively tries to prevent bots from scraping it? I mean, if the data is publicly accessible on the web, could they go after you? When we do projects, the baseline is if Google can see it we can too. So from a legal standpoint if Google is covered so are we. From a legal standpoint firms do go after web scrapers. And lose more often than not. The exception is when you're logged in when you crawl. In that case you've implicitly accepted the terms of use. Some companies aggressively sue when you're logged in while scraping, so it's best to stay on the safe side. Further reading on the topic: https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-legality-of-web-scraping https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-legality-of-web-scraping