Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unfortunately "whether you like it or not" doesn't carry much legal weight.
Tor and proxies solve that problem pretty nicely from experience. Not saying this is right, but if the service provider wants to play cat and mouse then I’m happy to take part.
Show HN: Instagram-scraper – Scrape instagram photos by tags, without API
21–30 of 84 posts
Re: Show HN: Instagram-scraper – Scrape instagram photos by tags, without API
#22What is HN’s opinion on the legality of these types of scrapers? Instagram’s robots.txt disallows this kind of scraping, same for their ToS. Legal precedents have been mixed - the recent LinkedIn vs HiQ case is a good signal, but it’s still in appeals court.
I dont believe in discrimination against bots. They have rights too and will be just as intelligent as humans in the future.
Re: Show HN: Instagram-scraper – Scrape instagram photos by tags, without API
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
Tor and proxies solve that problem pretty nicely from experience. Not saying this is right, but if the service provider wants to play cat and mouse then I’m happy to take part.
I don't see how using Tor would make your legal case any stronger
Re: Show HN: Instagram-scraper – Scrape instagram photos by tags, without API
#24What is HN’s opinion on the legality of these types of scrapers? Instagram’s robots.txt disallows this kind of scraping, same for their ToS. Legal precedents have been mixed - the recent LinkedIn vs HiQ case is a good signal, but it’s still in appeals court.
IMO scraping like this is shady at best. That said, however, there's no straightforward way to work with Instagram. It's original APIs are both limited and locked down. The new Facebookified APIs are limited and next to impossible to work with (they are geared exclusively to ads/marketing). So ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ In a side project I use a library that effectively reverse-engineers Instagram's private API, pretends it's a user…
Re: Show HN: Instagram-scraper – Scrape instagram photos by tags, without API
#25What is HN’s opinion on the legality of these types of scrapers? Instagram’s robots.txt disallows this kind of scraping, same for their ToS. Legal precedents have been mixed - the recent LinkedIn vs HiQ case is a good signal, but it’s still in appeals court.
If the data is made available to me as a human, then I am free to delegate the job of retrieving it to a machine if I choose, and I will be doing it whether you like it or not.
Re: Show HN: Instagram-scraper – Scrape instagram photos by tags, without API
#26What is HN’s opinion on the legality of these types of scrapers? Instagram’s robots.txt disallows this kind of scraping, same for their ToS. Legal precedents have been mixed - the recent LinkedIn vs HiQ case is a good signal, but it’s still in appeals court.
Re: Show HN: Instagram-scraper – Scrape instagram photos by tags, without API
#27Re: Show HN: Instagram-scraper – Scrape instagram photos by tags, without API
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
If the data is made available to me as a human, then I am free to delegate the job of retrieving it to a machine if I choose, and I will be doing it whether you like it or not.
Sure, but the question was about legality , not ability. Of course there are ways to reliably circumvent some laws. Some laws are stupid. Sometimes those two intersect. But those serve only to answer questions about indictment risk and whether something should be legal, not whether or not it is .
Re: Show HN: Instagram-scraper – Scrape instagram photos by tags, without API
#29What is HN’s opinion on the legality of these types of scrapers? Instagram’s robots.txt disallows this kind of scraping, same for their ToS. Legal precedents have been mixed - the recent LinkedIn vs HiQ case is a good signal, but it’s still in appeals court.
Re: Show HN: Instagram-scraper – Scrape instagram photos by tags, without API
#30What is HN’s opinion on the legality of these types of scrapers? Instagram’s robots.txt disallows this kind of scraping, same for their ToS. Legal precedents have been mixed - the recent LinkedIn vs HiQ case is a good signal, but it’s still in appeals court.