I think this analogy would be improved if the sign said "Please don't take any pictures." This is far more restrictive than a sign saying "Please don't take an

I think this analogy would be improved if the sign said "Please don't take any pictures." This is far more restrictive than a sign saying "Please don't take any seeds or cuttings." The latter is more understandable because such activity damages the flower garden (particularly if everyone starts taking seeds and cuttings). Now let's say a photographer visits the flower garden, takes images, and sells them online as post cards? As long as the photographer is not hindering other people (flooding the site with repeat requests, in the analogy), it doesn't seem to be a problem. On the other hand, let's say we don't have a flower garden, we have an art gallery or a street artist's display - or the pages of a recently published book. Now the issue is distributing copyrighted material without paying the creator... but what if there's a broad social consensus that copyright is out of control and should have been radically shortened decades ago? The vast majority of data being scraped is not copyrightable creative work, however, so as long as you're not obnoxiously hammering a site, scraping seems perfectly ethical.