On Friday, a law professor held a Reddit AMA with the r/Web Scraping Insider subreddit about the law of web scraping. He opened by stressing that nothing in the discussion constitutes legal advice. He noted that many of the topics are contested, that everyone has different tolerances for legal risk, and that anyone making decisions should consult a lawyer about how the law applies to their circumstances. He also said he focuses on US law, where rules outside the country could look quite different.
He describes himself as an Internet Law expert who began in the 1990s. He got his first email account in 1991, published his first Internet Law paper in 1993, started practicing Internet Law in 1994, and began teaching an Internet Law course in 1996, which he still teaches. He has been a full-time law professor since 2002. He approaches Internet Law as a generalist, tracking dozens of topics, with scraping and trespass to chattels being one part of that portfolio. His other priorities include liability for user-generated content and Section 230, online trademark law, and emoji law. He is also writing a forthcoming book on the Internet's pro-social benefits and how legal regulation jeopardizes them.
He finds scraping especially interesting and says he has received client questions about it since around 1997. He routinely tests on the topic in his course, citing Vox Marketing Group v. Prodigy Promos as the basis for this year's midterm. He says he has complicated feelings about scraping on policy grounds. He believes property owners should decide how their property is used, but also values access to information and the benefits scraping can bring to insight and markets.
He argues that the Internet's success depends on seamless, permissionless browsing. In his view, anti-scraping doctrines could turn browsing into a permissioned experience with checkpoints at every site. He notes that trespass to chattels is only one such barrier, alongside copyright law and online age authentication mandates.
Source: Hacker News · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing