Who imagines the law to be clear cut? There is a lack of precedent and therefore ambuiguity because the cases were never strong enough. They still are not str

Who imagines the law to be clear cut? There is a lack of precedent and therefore ambuiguity because the cases were never strong enough. They still are not strong enough. The ambiguity favors the incumbents, who have enough cash to finance any litigation they so choose. They do not want the law on scraping clarified through legal precedent lest they end up the losers. The price of losing a weak case against a new search engine would be worse for an existing one than avoiding litigation and instead relying on other methods of blocking competition. The OP who admits he is not a lawyer yet proceeds to advise others. Why? He cannot distinguish the difference between scraping and publishing scraped content or between something being "illegal", i.e. a criminal offense, versus something legal that someone perceives as violating their "rights" and prompts them to file a civil suit. As is typical in the US, such suits may ultimately be meritless and purely used to intimidate. There are law firms that make money from convincing people to file civil suits against potential competitors. They might list a number of potential causes of action against someone who visits your website. You might be able to sue your users. It does not mean you will win. In losing, you may create legal precedent that in effect enables more of them to violate your "rights". LinkedIn is taking a calculated risk. If they continue to sue web users who use automation (as does LinkedIn), not every defendant is going be intimidated. Some will defend themselves. I think one of them is going to win. It is one thing to purport to limit how someone can use some data that you provide to them. That is not "scraping". That is something else. It is another thing to purport to limit how someone can choose to use their own computer, i.e., interactively versus non-interactively (automation).