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> breaking the site's T&C T&C's have absolutely no bearing on publicly accessible information [1][2][3]. They only apply to registered users accessing login-re

• jacquesm 7y ago
  The world is a lot larger than just the United States. Besides that, even publicly available information can be copyrighted. So the scraping itself may be legal, storing that information; using it and re-publishing it very likely is not.
  • luckylion 7y ago
    > The world is a lot larger than just the United States. Where would this be significantly different? For T&C to be valid, you'll have to agree to them before using the service. Since you generally can't know, much less agree to, the T&C of a website before using that website, you have a chicken & egg problem where the law tends to come down on "these T&C aren't binding" imho. You're right about the re-publishing though. Storing is likely a different issue, even browser-caching is storing; iirc there were court decisions in Germany that essentially argued that even having data in memory is creating a copy.
    • aw3c2 7y ago
      In Germany there was a recent ruling that scraping, even for competing purposes, is fine. https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Urteil-zu-Screen-Scraping-BGH-legt-schriftliche-Urteilsbegruendung-vor-2236236.html https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Urteil-zu-Screen-Scr...
    • jacquesm 7y ago
      > iirc there were court decisions in Germany that essentially argued that even having data in memory is creating a copy My point exactly.
    • thom 7y ago
      In the EU there is the concept of ‘database rights’ which protects your investment creating and publishing large datasets. This legislation has nothing to do with site T&Cs.
• VvR-Ox 7y ago
  I totally agree with you. Yes there is some national laws which differ but in the end it's open data. Today everything open enough can be considered "free to do whatever people want to do with it". Before doing anything in this world I think you'll have to face this and think about how to deal with it if you have to. OT: I don't think it's great that small competitors have problems because of this but on the other side I'm not one of those people who repeat the idea of "competition as being good for innovation & customers" that we all heard a lot in some economic lectures. I think in an ideal world there'd be no need for more than 1 basic model of smartphone, notebook or car. In this disney world we'd have global efforts to innovate, develop an manufacture what we need and build that stuff in the best possible quality with fairness, modularity and reparability in mind. Yes you'd call this monopolies but in the end the freedom from this endless competition makes another way to work possible. Also innovation doesn't have to come from competition as we've seen from many examples (including what the first intelligent "homo XYZ" invented). Then of course there'd be no need to scrape for battling your competition. We'd have APIs for everything we'd like to know. Wouldn't this be nice?
• stordoff 7y ago
  For a non-US (England and Wales) example: > After seeking brief details of his employment, gross income, and savings, and whether he was a property owner, [the online bookmaker] asked him to specify a password, a memorable question and answer, and a bank account number.[...] > In seeking to identify such a pre-existing contract counsel for the claimant faced significant difficulties. In particular he was unable to point to any promise or commitment by the claimant which might form part of such a contract and provide the consideration necessary to make it legally binding.[...] > The provision of an on-line interactive platform is in effect simply a more modern equivalent of the expressed readiness of a potential contracting party [...] to enter into contracts by receiving and responding orally to telephone calls. > Accordingly, the claimant has failed to establish the existence of any legal contract to host and give binding effect to [the clause] Also of note: > Many, one might suspect most, would have passed up on that invitation [to read the documents] and proceeded directly to click on "Agree", even though it was suggested that they should do so only when they had read and understood the documents. Even if, exceptionally, the defendant in fact chose to look at the documents, he would have been faced [with a long and complex agreement]. It would have come close to a miracle if he had read [the clause], let alone appreciated its purport or implications, and it would have been quite irrational for the claimant to assume that he had. This was an entirely inadequate way to seek to make the customer liable [...], and is a further factor rendering the [clause] an unfair term. Spreadex Ltd v Cochrane [2012] EWHC 1290 (Comm) http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Comm/2012/1290.html http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Comm/2012/1290.html Note that this is not necessarily a full appraisal of the law, but merely meant to illustrate that forming a binding contract is more difficult than having terms available. Furthermore, even if there is no contract, there are IP considerations (copyright, database rights depending on the data) before you can use the data.