Is web scraping legal?
Web scraping, and what is legally permissible when web scraping, are still being established despite numerous rulings over the past two decades. If the scraped data is being used for personal and private use, and within fair use of copyright laws, there is usually no problem. However, if the data is going to be republished, if the scraping is aggressive enough to take down the site, or if the content is copyrighted and the scraper violates the terms of service, then there are several legal precedents to note.
In Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service Co., the United States Supreme Court decided scraping and republishing facts, such as telephone listings, are allowed. A similar case in Australia, Telstra ...
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