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Congrats! Web scraping is legal! (US precedent)

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Re: Congrats! Web scraping is legal! (US precedent)

#5
Linkedin is taking this to the Supreme Court: https://www.law360.com/articles/1237505/linkedin-will-go-to-...

No ultimate decision was ever made, and no, this doesn't make web scraping 100% legal. Wake me up when there's a new announcement because anyone interested in this already know this old news.

Re: Congrats! Web scraping is legal! (US precedent)

#7
> Now many site owners are trying to put technical obstacles to competitors who completely copy their information that is not protected by copyright. For example, ticket prices, product lots, open user profiles, and so on. Some sites consider this information “their own”, and consider web scraping as “theft”. Legally, this is not the case, which is now officially enshrined in the US.

Does this mean we can now scrape e.g. YouTube videos, Amazon reviews, IMDB reviews, Facebook events ... ?

Re: Congrats! Web scraping is legal! (US precedent)

#8
post #7

> Now many site owners are trying to put technical obstacles to competitors who completely copy their information that is not protected by copyright. For example, ticket prices, product lots, open user profiles, and so on. Some sites consider this information “their own”, and consider web scraping as “theft”. Legally, this is not the case, which is now officially enshrined in the US. Does this mean we can now scrape…

Yes you can scrape them, no you cannot repubilsh them. Everything you listed is protected by copyright. You cannot infringe on copyrights because of this ruling.

>hiQ argued that LinkedIn’s technical measures to block web scraping interfere with hiQ’s contracts with its own customers who rely on this data. In legal jargon, this is called” malicious interference with a contract”, which is prohibited by American law

Does this mean that Google's random recaptcha check is interference?

Re: Congrats! Web scraping is legal! (US precedent)

#9
post #7

> Now many site owners are trying to put technical obstacles to competitors who completely copy their information that is not protected by copyright. For example, ticket prices, product lots, open user profiles, and so on. Some sites consider this information “their own”, and consider web scraping as “theft”. Legally, this is not the case, which is now officially enshrined in the US. Does this mean we can now scrape…

Youtube videos are definitely protected by copyright, though.

Re: Congrats! Web scraping is legal! (US precedent)

#10
post #7

> Now many site owners are trying to put technical obstacles to competitors who completely copy their information that is not protected by copyright. For example, ticket prices, product lots, open user profiles, and so on. Some sites consider this information “their own”, and consider web scraping as “theft”. Legally, this is not the case, which is now officially enshrined in the US. Does this mean we can now scrape…

Probably not. Facts aren't copyrightable but creative works are.

So prices on Amazon.com are facts. User reviews are creative so probably copyrighted.

Similarly the videos on YouTube are copyrighted. However the number of views and the number of likes are probably scrapable.

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