Definitely check the TOS of the sites you plan to scrape. Some data, in particular factual data, isn't copyrightable, but that doesn't necessarily give you t

Definitely check the TOS of the sites you plan to scrape. Some data, in particular factual data, isn't copyrightable, but that doesn't necessarily give you the rights to automatically collect it from any place you can find it. Businesses spend a lot of money and time collecting and hosting data, so they can get pretty particular about how you're allowed to use their service. Here's an excerpt from the yellowpages.com TOS. Without it, their company names, addresses, and phone numbers would be more or less fair game for any competitor: "You are prohibited from data mining, scraping, crawling, or using any process or processes that send automated queries to the YELLOWPAGES.COM Web site. You may not use the YELLOWPAGES.COM Web sites to compile a collection of listings, including a competing listing product or service."