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Legality of Web Scraping — An Overview

Web scraping legality

Ever since the invention of the World Wide Web, web scraping has been one of its most integral facets. It is how search engines are able to gather and display hundreds of thousands of results instantaneously. And also how companies build databases, develop marketing strategies, generate leads, and so on.

While its potentials are immense, there are also concerns regarding the legality of web scraping. Thanks to some high-profile cases (which we’ll look at later in this article) and some frequent issues, “Is web scraping legal?” is one of the most frequently asked questions. The answer? Well, it depends — on each use case.

For SaaS and Daas providers, and data-driven businesses alike, it is important to have a clear understanding about all of the aspects of web scraping. In this post, we look at its legal aspect and try to give you an overview about:

Commonly held misconceptions

The general belief is that everything you see online is free to scrape and reuse. This is probably the biggest misconception out there regarding web scraping. This could land any individual or company in legal hot water.

The question of web scraping’s legality isn’t as black and white as one might assume — there’s also an ethical side that one must be aware of and familiar with. Knowing what kind of data is legal, illegal, or somewhere in between will help your decision-making. It can help you avoid any unintended and unnecessary consequences.

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Things to consider

There are a few things one needs to consider before and after scraping any data.

Types of data

In most cases, the degree of ease with which any web data is accessible more or less determines where the data lies on the legality spectrum.

Public data

Scraping data from public sites is perfectly legal. This refers to the data and information on websites which is obtained without the need to log in or authenticate one’s identity. Some examples of such websites are ecommerce platforms like Amazon and BestBuy.

Although these data sources might try to protect public information by posing various obstacles to scrapers and crawlers, extracting data points off them is absolutely fine.

Private or personal data

Any data that can reveal a person’s identity, such as their name, address, date of birth, medical and financial details, and contact information, are called Personally Identifiable Information, or PII.

As a general rule, it is illegal to scrape any personal information without the person’s consent or without any legal motivation. EU and California currently have the strictest laws in this respect.

Copyrighted data

It is illegal to scrape any openly accessible data like images, songs, articles, etc. that are intellectual properties of any business or individual. Because their owners have full control over their use and reproduction, scrapers require explicit consent in order to extract them. As a workaround, you can use snippets of the data, or cite and credit the sources to use the data.

Website Terms of Service (ToS)

Before scraping any website for its data, one needs to be aware of its policies regarding its access. If they explicitly contain any scraping restrictions, then it is worth assuming that scraping would constitute a breach of their ToS. In addition, even if there aren’t any such policies, one should be wary that their content may still be copyrighted.

Scraping behind a subscription or login

Services like LinkedIn require users to have an account before any data is visible. When signing up with these services, you’re almost always agreeing to their terms which forbid scraping their data.

Since scraper bots and crawlers use your account credentials to gain access to the data, the service provider can easily identify and ban you from their platform altogether. Hence, it is advised to stay away from this option and instead try to find publicly available data.


Current legislations

As there currently aren’t any clear laws determining the legality or otherwise of web scraping, lawsuits are handled on a case-by-case basis. Having said that, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the US Privacy Act are referred to in most cases in Europe and the US respectively.

web scraping legality
US Supreme Court

GDPR

The GDPR came into effect in May 2018 and protects the personal details of people within the European Economic Area (EEA). Some example of personal data include people’s names, emails, phone numbers, dates of birth, IP address, credit card and bank details, medical records and multimedia like photos, audio and videos.

The GDPR classifies the protection of personal data as a “fundamental right“. As such, it prohibits the processing of personal data unless it is done under one of six lawful bases — consent, contract, public task, vital interest, legitimate interest or legal requirement. When the processing is based on consent, the data subject has the right to revoke it at any time.

Furthermore, data controllers must clearly disclose any data collection, declare the lawful basis and purpose, and state how long the data is being retained. Additionally, disclose if it is subject to sharing with third parties or outside of the EEA.

US Privacy Act

While the US doesn’t have one federal regulation that legislates data privacy and protection like the EU, there are several industry-specific legal acts, such as the GLBA for finance, HIPAA for healthcare and COPPA for children’s data.

In 2020 however, California passed a state law — the Californian Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) — which requires companies collecting personal data to explicitly disclose how they intend to use that data. It also allows consumers to remove their information or opt-out of data collection. The same rules also apply to data scraping companies.

Comparison

The GDPR and CCPA both allow consumers to access and remove their personal information and opt-out altogether at any given time. However, users can edit their data under the GDPR, but not under the CCPA. Similarly, the CCPA only asks for privacy notice on websites, while the GDPR requires explicit user consent.


Frequent legal issues

The following are some of the most repeated offenses and issues in context of web scraping.

Data server
Sending frequent requests web servers disrupts a website and reduces its performance.

Copyright infringement

As mentioned above, although scraping any openly accessible data may be legal, there may be certain restrictions and legal consequences if the data is copyright-protected. Any such data cannot be published or used for commercial purposes if you want to abide by the legal framework.

Any infringement of copyrighted data is prosecutable, regardless of how you access and collect the data.

Computer Fraud and Abuse Act violation

The CFAA was passed in 1984 to prohibit any unauthorized access to computers and networks. Originally drafted to protect military, financial and other sensitive data, it was extended to include all private information.

The CFAA doesn’t apply to web crawlers and scraping techniques that access only publicly available information.

Trespass to chattels

A trespass to chattels (or site security) occurs when a website or its servers are violated or hurt in any way. In context of web scraping, a crawler repeatedly sending requests can effect the target website’s performance by crashing or slowing down its server.

From a legal standpoint, the site owners might consider the frequent requests as an intentional attack to their system. As a result, it is important and morally responsible for DaaS providers to build scrapers that do not harm the target website.


High-profile cases

As mentioned earlier, there are a few historical cases which have set legal precedence in web scraping lawsuits.

eBay vs Bidder’s Edge (1999)

Bidder’s Edge, a website that gathered auction listings, sent 100,000 daily requests to eBay’s servers to access its ongoing auctions, which resulted in damage to eBay’s systems. In late 1999, eBay filed an injunction against Bidder’s Edge, stating the violation of the Trespass to Chattels law.

Although both parties later settled the case out of court for an undisclosed amount, it set a legal precedent for future cases.

hiQ Labs vs LinkedIn

HiQ Labs vs LinkedIn (2019)

This historic case started when hiQ Labs, a data analytics company, sued LinkedIn for prohibiting it from scraping public profiles on LinkedIn. HiQ Labs used the data to consult employers about job applicants.

In 2019, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the CFAA did not apply since the data was publicly available and non-copyright. As a result, LinkedIn wasn’t able to prevent hiQ Labs from accessing its public profiles. It did however restrict the user profiles to be accessible only after logging in.

It is worth mentioning that the case is far from concluded as LinkedIn continues to pursue the matter with the US Supreme Court.

Update (April 2022): In its second ruling on 18 April 2022, the Ninth Circuit reaffirmed its original decision and found that scraping data that is publicly accessible on the internet is not a violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, or CFAA, which governs what constitutes computer hacking under U.S. law. [via TechCrunch]

Update (December 2022): On 6 December 2022, hiQ Labs and LinkedIn reached a confidential settlement agreement, thus ending their long-running litigation.


Summary

Since the question of web scraping isn’t black or white, you must analyze each use case thoroughly to avoid any unintended consequences. You need to consider existing legislation, the types of data being collected, and the data sources’ terms and policies. Furthermore the ethical usage after extraction.

Here at Grepsr, we take our web scraping responsibilities extremely seriously. We adhere to all legal frameworks before, during, and after taking on a data acquisition project. We also follow the best ethical practices in order to avoid disrupting our target websites’ performances. All whilst continuing to deliver the most accurate and reliable data to all our customers.

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Big Data has become an internet buzz lately. Not a day goes by without a mention of Big Data in many articles published by media or tech companies around the world.

FIVE Essential Questions for Assessing your Big Data Deployment Readiness

Big Data isn’t just a big buzzword. Nor is it merely a business ritual. Ask yourself these 5 essential questions to know if you business is ready for data-driven transformation in the Big Data era

Data Extraction for BI: Picking the Right Services is Crucial

Finding the appropriate data warehousing and Business Intelligence (BI) platforms that can understand and address your business concerns, priorities, and needs is a daunting task. Specifically, the ones that can have cohesive approaches in generating and deploying your data

Seven Key Areas Where Big Data has Brought Big Transformations

As the volume, variety, and velocity of Big Data increases, so does its value and application. Today, there is a widespread use of Big Data, and the whole fabric of life has become increasingly data driven. Here is a brief review of 7 major areas which have gone through massive transformations driven by data: Business Business enterprises […]

Data Mining for Developing Business Intelligence

The growing use of digital technologies in every sphere of life has resulted in the rapid escalation of digital data. While digitization of the facilities of everyday use has given rise to datafication, the process of datafication has produced a byproduct known as big data, which is regarded as a new oil of the digital […]

How Grepsr Works: A Brief Introduction

Web crawling and data extraction services at Grepsr are simple, quick, hassle free and intuitive. We focus on providing top–quality services to our customers in the highly competitive rates. Our strong base–with cutting-edge technologies and advanced infrastructure–in Kathmandu and our maturing technical expertise in the area have helped us to compete with the top tire […]

11 Interesting Quotes about Data

These days, almost everybody—be it a casual technophile or a trailblazing technocrat—has something to say about the usefulness of data. Apparently, there is no area of human interest where you cannot achieve agility, efficiency, and better outcome by deploying data science. Business, astronomy, neuroscience and you name it. Data had never been generated with such […]

Big Data & the Power of Personalization

According to Wikipedia, Big data is a field that treats ways to analyze, systematically extract information from, or otherwise deal with data sets that are too large or complex to be dealt with by traditional data-processing application software. “Doing business without advertising is like winking at a girl in the dark. You know what you are doing, but nobody else […]

Big Data is Redefining News & Journalism

If digital data were something physical, it would have massively altered the shape of our world, probably, with new data mountains rising every hour. Whether you browse the web or flip pages of print media, you are sure to stumble upon some news about big data, all the while feeding the web with your digital […]

Data Mining: How Can Businesses Capitalize on Big Data?

In the recent years, data mining has become a prickly issue. The big controversies and clamors it has gathered in the political and business arenas suggest its importance in our time. No wonder, it is used as a household name in the business world. Data mining, in fact, is an inevitable consequence of all the technological innovations […]

Leverage Grepsr to Turn Data into Asset

Have you ever been overwhelmed or even inundated by a sheer amount of data you have to handle every day? Handling too much of data can be a painstaking job in the age that has seen an enormous surge in digitization, quantification, and datafication of information. Today, you have to be equipped with data no […]

Welcoming New Year 2014 with Renewed Energy

2013 in the Retrospect 2013 was a very productive year for Grepsr. Measuring our success as a startup, we were able to maintain a steady progress in this year. We achieved a significant growth in terms of users, orders, and revenues, which was many times larger than 2012. During 2013, we managed to go global, […]

Web Scraping vs API

Every system you come across today has an API already developed for their customers or it is at least in their bucket list. While APIs are great if you really need to interact with the system but if you are only looking to extract data from the website, web scraping is a much better option. […]

Grepsr at Startup Asia event in Jakarta

We are just back from an awesome start-up event in Jakarta, Indonesia organized by TechInAsia. There were big investors and experts from the Asian tech industry at the event. We shared the stage with 15 other start-ups who pitched their product in front of a big crowd – it was an amazing experience! The reception […]

Web Crawling Software or Web Crawling Service

Some people ask us if we are a “service” or a “software”. We simply tell them – we are a service, with killer software that runs behind the scenes! 🙂 Also, lot of our customers ask us, why go for a Web Crawling Service over a Web Crawling Software? The answer is pretty straight forward. […]

Managed Data Extraction Service

Grepsr is what we like to call, “Managed Data Extraction Service”. Here are some of the reasons why we call it “managed”: We let you focus on your business and use the data — worrying about technical details of extraction is our job, and we will do it for you. We let you describe your […]

Official Launch of Grepsr (Beta)

We are immensely proud to launch Grepsr today. Grepsr is probably one of the first Web 2.0 Software as a Service (SaaS) products for website data extraction. So what does this mean for the customers? Cheaper costs – you pay a flat monthly fee no matter how big or small your extraction needs are. Fully […]

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