Depending on your use-case, their TOS. (See IMDb for a relevant example: http://app.imdb.com/find?api=v1&appid=iphone1&locale=en_US&q=shrek http://app.imdb.com/

Depending on your use-case, their TOS. (See IMDb for a relevant example: http://app.imdb.com/find?api=v1&appid=iphone1&locale=en_US&q=shrek http://app.imdb.com/find?api=v1&appid=iphone1&locale... see the bottom comment of that link). That is, most websites which provide unique info will not let you re-distribute this (be it an IMDb score, a summary of a movie written by one of their users, etc.). Edit: for personal use there is not much to take into account other than what you mention. It is not illegal to "see" a webpage, it's more of a question of what you do with the content. In fact, one could argue that scraping is better than refreshing in your browser (as you'll hit them with fewer GET requests if done properly - as you won't download js/css dependencies).