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Obviously it's a good idea to follow TOS. But as a practical matter, they have to know that you're doing it before they can take action. You wouldn't want to p
by downandout 10y ago
Obviously it's a good idea to follow TOS. But as a practical matter, they have to know that you're doing it before they can take action. You wouldn't want to put up a site announcing that you're selling scraped LinkedIn data, for example. But if that data is valuable to your business - collecting names of people that work in certain positions at certain companies so that you can do targeted snail mail campaigns for example - you could quietly scrape and use the data without issue. Use proxies and prosper.
- cookiecaper 10y agoThis only goes so far, and if you get found out, you're looking at willful infringement (which usually triples damages) and probably criminal charges under the CFAA. However, it should be acknowledged that there are many people making quiet livings off scrapes that are not legal. There are even a few companies making loud livings off such scrapes, like Google. If you're not going to run it totally anonymously, you should be prepared to jettison and repackage it when you get found it (so that you appear to be complying with the C&D). Scraping is a huge part of the web, and everyone does it. It sucks that it has to live underground because only big companies can duke it out in court.
- downandout 10y agoTOS violations have been found to not be subject to the criminal provisions of the CFAA. The only circumstance under which it would become a criminal issue is if they successfully sued you for it, and obtained a judgment that included a provision ordering you to cease scraping. Ignoring such a court order would then potentially expose you to a criminal contempt of court action.