Is Web Scraping Legal or Not?

Web Scraping is the technique of automatically extracting data from websites using software/script.

Is it legal to scrape data from websites using the software? The answer to this question is not a simple yes or no.

The real question here should be regarding how you plan to use the data which you have extracted from a website (either manually or via using software). Because the data displayed by the most website is for public consumption.

It is legal to copy this information to a file on your computer. But it is regarding how you plan to use this data that you should be careful about. If the data is downloaded for your personal use and analysis, then it is absolutely ethical.

But in case you are planning to use it as your own, on your website, in a way that is entirely against the interest of the original owner of the data, without attributing the original owner, then it is unethical and illegal.

Also, while extracting data from websites using software, since web scrapers can read and extract data from web pages more quickly than humans, care should be taken so that the web scraping process does not affect the performance/bandwidth of the web server in any way. Most web servers will automatically block your IP, preventing further access to its pages, in case this happens.

Websites have their own ‘Terms of use and Copyright details whose links you can easily find on the website home page itself. Users of web scraping tools should respect the terms of use and copyright statements of target websites. These refer mainly to how their data can be used and how their site can be accessed.

Did you know: Top 6 Myths about web scraping technique in 2022

In General Words :

Scraping and extracting public data is protected by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.

In fact, big search engine companies are getting a big part of their data by scraping thousands of public websites.

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