Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's potentially an answer if the judge decides that the browsewrap notice was not sufficiently conspicuous to constitute a binding agreement, etc. I would guess that most judges would not be charitable to someone pretending that they've circumvented this by rotating through proxies pre-emptively. In fact, this would likely work against the defendant as it'd be evidence of willful infringement, which is typically 3…
Well, looks like all the HN user's of Scrapy better lawyer up because Scrapy Cloud offers exactly that, as do rest of the web scraping vendors like Mozenda out on the market. They've all been around for 10+ years, doesn't seem like this is an issue for them.
For scraping-related activities, Scrapinghub would probably be the party sued, as was the case in 3Taps, though the clients could probably also be legitimately sued for various things, most obviously copyright infringement.
Again, I'm really not sure what you're getting at here. Yes, it's a great idea to check with a lawyer and assess your potential legal exposure. That's why lawyers exist! You can then ask them questions, as Scrapinghub surely has, about how to minimize that potential legal exposure. You definitely SHOULD do that, especially since scraping is more or less illegal in the United States.
Courts frequently use an analogy to private physical property to address the matter of accessing a web site. Running a business based on scraping until someone sends you a C&D is roughly the same as running a business based on trespassing on private property until someone serves you with a no-trespass order.
Maybe it will work out fine, and most of the time, as long as you leave the property promptly upon request, you probably won't have an issue just because there's no benefit in dragging the matter out further. But that doesn't mean there isn't legal risk involved in running such a business, nor does it mean that you won't be liable for damages incurred whilst trespassing.
In such a case, questions about whether the borders of the property were clearly delineated, whether "No Trespassing" signs were posted, whether a reasonable person would've understood they weren't allowed to be there or not, etc., would be asked to determine the existence and/or extent of the trespasser's liability.
In the same manner, there is substantial risk involved in running a business whose primary function is to scrape websites, and the same types of questions would be (are) asked in a court case related to network access. People deserve to be informed of that.
That's not FUD, it's just the law. If you don't like it, well, most people who know what they're talking about don't either, but that doesn't change the law. Saying "$Party_X hasn't been sued over it!" also doesn't change the law or make the process any less legally risky.
If you find this arrangement unsettling or absurd, as you obviously do, I would suggest that you direct your energies/attention to your local representatives, the EFF, and other types of political activism that may help rectify the situation rather than accusing HN commenters of spreading FUD.
When you do something illegal, you probably won't get sued for it, because it costs a ton of money to sue someone and it's not likely that you're annoying anyone enough to justify that. This is especially the case if you back off at the first sign of annoyance. That's as much as we can say for your angle.
If you're comfortable basing a business on that, be my guest.