That's a great question, I'm wondering that myself. So I know from the legal standpoint anti-scraping has been a messy debate, but what is different this time.

That's a great question, I'm wondering that myself. So I know from the legal standpoint anti-scraping has been a messy debate, but what is different this time. Amazon and Linkedin won't die if their analytics leaks, in fact in Linkedin's case all the data was volunteered by the users. These users won't up and leave to another place that scraped Linkedin. I'm not sure if I agree with the lawsuit outcomes, but it didn't look like an existential threat to Linkedin or Amazon. Now, in case of scraping _all_ of public useful information. Let's take Stackoverflow as an example of a community-produced content. It gets 90% of its traffic from Google, people show up, read, ask and answer questions (click on jobs and ads to keep SO servers running). If a scraper comes by that inhales all of that data, and regurgitates it under Microsoft's name, giving no credit, no references and absolutely nothing back to the authors of those questions and answers. What is the reason for SO to exist anymore? What is the motivation for people to keep answering and refining the questions? 90% of Stackoverflow will evaporate. The way it's currently set up it's an existential threat to any meaningful content on the web. Maybe there have been some legal precedents to repeal anti-scraping, but this is a very big problem now.