An IP address does not for long accurately identify a computer or a person. E.g., Internet service providers (ISP) make heavy use of dynamic host connection p

An IP address does not for long accurately identify a computer or a person. E.g., Internet service providers (ISP) make heavy use of dynamic host connection protocol (DHCP) which assigns a new IP address for each new connection from a user. And, for a user permanently connected via a cable modem, losing power to the modem commonly causes it to forget it's assigned IP address and when power is on again to request a new IP address from the ISP. Also, commonly ISPs change user IP addresses for whatever reasons without notice. Really, a user often doesn't know what IP address he is using. Fixed IP addresses are important for servers but not for users. And due to the fact that with 32 bit IP addresses there are only about 4 billion IP addresses to serve the whole Internet, ISPs commonly assign a new IP address for each connection and may have fewer IP addresses than paying customers. A Web site has no easy way to know that a specific IP address is from a specific computer or a specific person. And, indeed, just by having electric power go out, the user's computer will likely be using a new IP address. So, for a Web site to block an IP address does not block a specific computer or specific user. So, a user can just say, "That you got some traffic from that IP address is no evidence that I accessed your Web site. That traffic could have been from any customer of my ISP." Next, there is a problem with screen scraping: The way the Web works, with HTTP, HTML, and CSS, when a Web site sends a Web page to a user, what is sent is essentially just simple, plain text. Then screen scraping is just keeping what was sent. The Web site sent the text; the user just kept a copy; keeping a copy at least until the original changes is a standard performance feature of Web browsers. So, it's standard for a user to have and keep a copy of what the Web site sent. The Web site freely sent the data as just simple text; if the Web site doesn't want people to have that data, then the Web site should not send that data to people.