The legal system does not "decides" on legality unless its forced too. Consider the case of Google Books project. Eventually the courts did rule that it constit

The legal system does not "decides" on legality unless its forced too. Consider the case of Google Books project. Eventually the courts did rule that it constituted fair use. Or consider the situation involving Flickr and Pinterest. [1] or the one involving RapGenius and lyrics licensing. [2] So to answer your questions: > Are comments on sites like this public data or private? > Does the purpose of your scraping make a difference, if one use is just a project but another would be selling the data? There is no correct answer, at least unless you are willing to wait a decade and spend millions while the cases make their way through the byzantine legal system of districts, circuits, appeals and supremes. Unlike Science & Technology where there is a "correct" answer, you should approach legal system with different perspective using instincts and acceptable risk tolerance. The history is littered with people who took a bet, and ended up succeeding or failing upwards. Finally ignorance is actually preferable to knowledge. By writing this question or say having this conversation over an email you are simply creating a paper trail that can only harm you if you get sued tomorrow. [3] [1] https://photo.stackexchange.com/questions/53304/what-is-the-legal-consensus-on-pinning-photos-using-pinterest https://photo.stackexchange.com/questions/53304/what-is-the-... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/07/business/media/rap-genius-website-agrees-to-license-with-music-publishers.html https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/07/business/media/rap-genius... [3] https://www.fastcompany.com/1588353/steal-it-and-other-internal-youtube-emails-viacoms-copyright-suit https://www.fastcompany.com/1588353/steal-it-and-other-inter...