Legal or Illegal Web Scraping?

If you are in any way connected with the term "Web Scraping", you've probably encountered the question – is Web Scraping legal or illegal? Well, let's discuss this issue. Upon closer inspection, you'll find that in the modern era, the biggest asset of any business is data! Even giants like Facebook, Amazon, and Uber become leaders thanks to the vast amount of data they store. What if someone extracts all that data from the owner's website in a matter of minutes? Yes, that's exactly where web scraping comes in. Web scraping – legal or illegal – is the process of automatically extracting data and specific information from websites using software or scripts. The extracted information can be saved in various formats such as SQL, Excel, and HTML. There are many tools to accomplish this task, as well as various languages with libraries that support web scraping. Among all these languages, Python is considered one of the best for web scraping due to features like rich libraries, ease of use, dynamic typing, etc. Beautiful Soup and Scrapy are such Python libraries that support web scraping. Now you're probably wondering why anyone would try to extract such extensive data from websites or what benefits web scraping provides. As we mentioned earlier, data is very valuable for businesses, and if you gain access to it via web scraping, it can be used for various purposes such as

• Competitor analysis
• Lead generation
• Availability of contact information
• Brand monitoring
• Social media scraping
• Research and development
• Extraction of financial reports, etc.

So, let's return to where we started – is it legal to engage in web scraping or not? However, from a technical standpoint, web scraping is not an illegal process, but the decision depends on various factors – how you use the extracted data, whether you violate the "Terms and Conditions", etc. For example: suppose you allow someone to enter your house through the main gate, but the person prefers to climb over the boundary wall. Would you allow that person to enter your residence? Similarly, the data displayed on most websites is public, so storing that data on your system for personal use is legal. But if you want to use it for your own purposes without the owner's consent and in violation of the "Terms and Conditions", then it would be considered illegal. However, the legislation regarding web scraping is unclear, but there are still some rules that can land you in trouble for unauthorized web scraping. Some of them are listed below:

• Violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)
• Violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA)
• Breach of contract
• Copyright infringement
• Unauthorized access, etc.

LinkedIn vs. HiQ It can be said that "LinkedIn vs. HiQ" is one of the biggest legal disputes related to data scraping. HiQ, a data analytics company, entered into a legal dispute with LinkedIn when the latter sent HiQ a cease-and-desist letter demanding that it stop scraping the site. However, LinkedIn got a counterpunch from HiQ, which claimed that LinkedIn's data is available to anyone who visits it, and there is nothing wrong with scraping public data. However, the final decision did not please LinkedIn, as the court prohibited the company from blocking HiQ's requests to scrape data from public profiles on the platform. This case differs from previous web scraping legal disputes in that the court ruled not in favor of the company whose data was being scraped. Facebook Vs. Power Ventures "Facebook Vs. Power Ventures" is also a well-known legal dispute related to data scraping. This is a lawsuit filed by Facebook, alleging that Power Ventures Inc. collected Facebook user data and used it on its own site. Facebook claims that the company violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) as well as the California Comprehensive Computer Data Access and Fraud Act. According to Facebook, Power Ventures also violated the CAN-SPAM Act by using Facebook's identifying information in the process of extracting user data. As a defense, Power Ventures stated that Facebook's DMCA claims were insufficient to consider. They also claimed that no unauthorized access occurred because users were actually accessing their own data on Facebook through the Power Ventures platform. However, despite all these arguments, the court ruled in favor of Facebook. So, after we've clarified whether web scraping is legal or illegal, it all depends on how you perform scraping and how you use the obtained data. Now let's look at strategies to follow when performing web scraping.

• If an API is provided, try to avoid web scraping
• Maintain an interval of about 12-15 seconds between requests
• Do not use collected data for commercial purposes without the owner's consent.
• Always review the terms of service and follow their policies.
• If someone has imposed restrictions on access to their data, you should request permission before proceeding.

From all of the above, we can conclude that web scraping itself is not illegal, but ethical norms should be observed when conducting it. With the right approach, web scraping can help us make the best use of the Internet's capabilities, the most striking example being the Google search engine. Therefore, do not give the owner of the target site a reason to block you or even sue you for any wrongful actions, and comply with the Terms of Service (ToS) of other sites.