Data scraping legal?

Is data scraping legal?

This isn’t a legal forum and I’m not a lawyer, so I may be wrong. I would think it depends on what data you want to scrape and what you propose to do with the data when it’s scraped. Even where it is legal it may still be morally wrong.

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STANDARD DISCLAIMER: THIS IS NOT LEGAL ADVICE. CONSULT A LAWYER. I AM NOT YOUR ATTORNEY.

Secondary Disclaimer: I am in the United States. Your country/region/principality may have different limitations.

The general principle, as I understand it, is “it’s okay unless they say it’s not okay”. Most… ‘significant’ (that’s a bad choice of phrase)… websites contain Terms of Service, and most of those Terms of Service define whether or not you can use data from the site, often specifying for how long and etc.

Now, where you may get into differing waters is when you scrape or copy pictures, or registered literary works. You start to wander into Copyright laws at that point…

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