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I'm not a lawyer, but a rule of thumb is: Obey the TOS and the robots.txt under all circumstances. And in general, be careful. There seems to be precedent for

I'm not a lawyer, but a rule of thumb is: Obey the TOS and the robots.txt under all circumstances. And in general, be careful. There seems to be precedent for a TOS violation being considered a crime these days: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/wiseguys-tickets-charged-hacking-ticketmaster-livenation-illegally-grab-best-seats-article-1.171013 http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/wiseguys-tickets-charg... http://marketingland.com/twitter-reaches-spam-lawsuit-settlement-with-tweet-adder-45890 http://marketingland.com/twitter-reaches-spam-lawsuit-settle... And you should definitely talk to a lawyer.

erroneousfunk 11y ago
The ticket scam case hasn't been decided yet -- it's unclear if it's actually going to set a precedent or not. The TweetAttacks case is more than just "they didn't follow the TOS." Just having a TOS on your site saying "no scrapers" means very little, legally, unless other conditions are met. 1. TweetAttacks specifically agreed to the TOS while creating accounts (in many instances of scraping the TOS does not have to be agreed to) 2. THEN they didn't follow the TOS 3. They were notified by Twitter to stop operations, and did not 4. Twitter spent significant amounts of money to compensate for damages that they specifically (not just spammers in general) caused (if these occurred after they were given a cease and desist, Twitter can sue under other laws, although I'm not clear if this actually occurred) 5. TweetAdder lied on its website and misled users into thinking that it was complying with Twitter rules, deceiving consumers. In addition, the case was settled, so it's also not a precedent. And robots.txt? It means even less than the TOS. It's an unofficial standard and an often unlinked file that means nothing legally.
- MalcolmDiggs 11y ago
  Those are all really good points. I think you're right on the money. I had always assumed though, that by simply visiting a (whether by browser, or scraper), you were implicitly accepting the Terms of Use. (And would therefore be breaking them if the TOS disallowed scraping). But it sounds like (from what you said) that there's a big difference between visiting a site and actually registering/accepting-the-terms. If that's the case, then I think that changes my opinion quite a bit.

erroneousfunk 11y ago

The ticket scam case hasn't been decided yet -- it's unclear if it's actually going to set a precedent or not. The TweetAttacks case is more than just "they didn't follow the TOS." Just having a TOS on your site saying "no scrapers" means very little, legally, unless other conditions are met. 1. TweetAttacks specifically agreed to the TOS while creating accounts (in many instances of scraping the TOS does not have to be agreed to) 2. THEN they didn't follow the TOS 3. They were notified by Twitter to stop operations, and did not 4. Twitter spent significant amounts of money to compensate for damages that they specifically (not just spammers in general) caused (if these occurred after they were given a cease and desist, Twitter can sue under other laws, although I'm not clear if this actually occurred) 5. TweetAdder lied on its website and misled users into thinking that it was complying with Twitter rules, deceiving consumers. In addition, the case was settled, so it's also not a precedent. And robots.txt? It means even less than the TOS. It's an unofficial standard and an often unlinked file that means nothing legally.

MalcolmDiggs 11y ago
Those are all really good points. I think you're right on the money. I had always assumed though, that by simply visiting a (whether by browser, or scraper), you were implicitly accepting the Terms of Use. (And would therefore be breaking them if the TOS disallowed scraping). But it sounds like (from what you said) that there's a big difference between visiting a site and actually registering/accepting-the-terms. If that's the case, then I think that changes my opinion quite a bit.