Linkworthy: Scraping as a Legal Minefield
While doing research for a comment I posted, I ran across a very interesting link entitled "Website Spidering and Scraping: A Legal Minefield" by Jorge L. Contreras, Jr. and Nader Mousavi of WilmerHale.
The link is interesting in that it talks about all of the ways scrapers can run into legal trouble including statutes covering computer fraud, trespass to chattels, breach of contract and copyright law.
It also offers some of the best legal advice I've seen for preventing scrapers, namely putting them on notice with a well-written terms of service that prohibits scraping.
This page relates directly to previous articles I've written about Scrapegoat, how Grokster might apply to scraping and a future article I am finishing off about Dapper.
Anyone who is dealing with scraping needs to take a look at this article as it offers several great alternatives to attack scrapers beyond simply using copyright law and the DMCA.
tags: Plagiarism, Content+Theft, Copyright+Infringement, DMCA, Copyright, Scraping, Scraper
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