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"Come on, I worked so hard on this project! And this is publicly accessible data! There's certainly a way around this, right? Or else, I did all of this for nothing... Sigh..."
Yep - this is what I said to myself, just after realizing that my ambitious data analysis project could get me into hot water. I intended to deploy a large-scale web crawler to collect data from multiple high profile websites. And then I was planning to publish the results of my analysis for the benefit of everybody. Pretty noble, right? Yes, but also pretty risky.
Interestingly, I've been seeing more and more projects like mine lately. And even more tutorials encouraging some form of web scraping or crawling. But what troubles me is the appalling widespread ignorance on the legal aspect of it.
So this is what this post is all about - understanding the possible consequences of web scraping and crawling. Hopefully, this will help you to avoid any potential problem.
Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer. I'm simply a programmer who happens to be interested in this topic. You should seek out appropriate professional advice regarding your specific situation.
https://benbernardblog.com/web-scraping-and-crawling-are-perfectly-legal-right/
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 31 2019, @01:15PM
I regularly get people asking me if such-and-such various random thing is legal or illegal. Of course I am not a lawyer. All I can tell people is to assume everything is illegal. Even when something is legal, those with lots of money can still try to legally harass you, draining your wallet. Lots of things are illegal that should not be, and the normal person has no way to know for themselves every little thing that is illegal/legal or what exceptions there are.
The legal system is a bad joke.