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<h1 itemprop="name" class="fs-headline1 ow-break-word mb8 grid--cell fl1"><a href="/questions/93698/web-scraping-intellectual-property-and-the-ethics-of-answering" class="question-hyperlink">Web Scraping, Intellectual Property and the Ethics of Answering</a></h1>
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<time itemprop="dateCreated" datetime="2011-06-03T17:11:05">9 years, 5 months ago</time>
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<p>Twice today I have come across questions requesting assistance scraping data from copyrighted web pages. Both questions listed the site in question which, after a quick visit, shows the site content to be protected under copyright.</p>
<p>In each case I added a comment cautioning respondents to consider the ethical issues of assisting in the theft of intellectual property. In one case, a previous respondent replied he hadn't considered this when answering the OP's question.</p>
<p>Ignoring for the moment the possible legal culpability of respondents and of SO itself...</p>
<p>How should questions like these be handled? </p>
<p>Should respondents consider ethical issues like these before answering? And if so, how can we assure they do?</p>
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asked <span title="2011-06-03 17:11:05Z" class="relativetime">Jun 3 '11 at 17:11</span>
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<a href="/users/162185/rob-raisch">Rob Raisch</a><span class="d-none" itemprop="name">Rob Raisch</span>
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<span class="reputation-score" title="reputation score " dir="ltr">321</span><span title="1 silver badge" aria-hidden="true"><span class="badge2"></span><span class="badgecount">1</span></span><span class="v-visible-sr">1 silver badge</span><span title="6 bronze badges" aria-hidden="true"><span class="badge3"></span><span class="badgecount">6</span></span><span class="v-visible-sr">6 bronze badges</span>
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<span class="comment-copy">If it is clear that the OP is being abusive, I close these kinds of questions as too localized.</span>
– <span class="comment-user">user102937</span>
<span class="comment-date" dir="ltr"><span title="2011-06-03 17:33:17Z, License: CC BY-SA 3.0" class="relativetime-clean">Jun 3 '11 at 17:33</span></span>
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<span class="comment-copy">Knowledge should be free... It's up to the asker to determine legality of use.</span>
– <a href="/users/140178/soumya"
title="645 reputation"
class="comment-user">Soumya</a>
<span class="comment-date" dir="ltr"><span title="2011-06-03 17:39:39Z, License: CC BY-SA 3.0" class="relativetime-clean">Jun 3 '11 at 17:39</span></span>
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<span class="comment-copy">Note that the Terms of Use for the StackExchange network is pretty clear about this. It specifically prohibits posting of content that violates the rights of others. See <a href="http://stackexchange.com/legal">stackexchange.com/legal</a> under the <b>Subscriber Content</b> section.</span>
– <span class="comment-user">user102937</span>
<span class="comment-date" dir="ltr"><span title="2011-06-03 17:48:18Z, License: CC BY-SA 3.0" class="relativetime-clean">Jun 3 '11 at 17:48</span></span>
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<span class="comment-copy">Does web scraping always violate copyright? I would assume that's only an issue if it's actually being copied somewhere, whereas a tool that you write to display data for your own use is more or less a stripped-down web browser. For example, I have a small python script that does a GET on one website and tells me what the headline is. I don't think I've violated anyone's copyright, at least that I can see. Would it be OK for me to ask for help constructing something like my tool?</span>
– <a href="/users/134374/dsolimano"
title="1,643 reputation"
class="comment-user">dsolimano</a>
<span class="comment-date" dir="ltr"><span title="2011-06-03 19:01:47Z, License: CC BY-SA 3.0" class="relativetime-clean">Jun 3 '11 at 19:01</span></span>
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<span class="comment-copy">@dsolimano Good question! I suppose it's a question of degree. In the questions that triggered this discussion, the OPs stated they wanted to extract all the terms and definitions from an online dictionary or all of the records from a multi-page list of contacts. This kind of scraping isn't the same as, for example, creating an RSS feed of articles from a news site for personal use.</span>
– <a href="/users/162185/rob-raisch"
title="321 reputation"
class="comment-user owner">Rob Raisch</a>
<span class="comment-date" dir="ltr"><span title="2011-06-03 19:06:58Z, License: CC BY-SA 3.0" class="relativetime-clean">Jun 3 '11 at 19:06</span></span>
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<span class="comment-copy">@dsolimano: Check the website's Terms of Use. Scraping is often prohibited. If you're in doubt, just ask the website's owner. Your particular usage scenario is probably OK. There's a vast difference between obtaining the title of individual pages for personal use, and ripping an entire website for commercial purposes.</span>
– <span class="comment-user">user102937</span>
<span class="comment-date" dir="ltr"><span title="2011-06-03 22:10:38Z, License: CC BY-SA 3.0" class="relativetime-clean">Jun 3 '11 at 22:10</span></span>
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<span class="comment-copy">@RobertHarvey what is the legal definition of scraping? Are you breaking any law because you visit the site - your browser must scrap the content before it can show it to you!</span>
– <a href="/users/155074/danubian-sailor"
title="13,758 reputation"
class="comment-user">Danubian Sailor</a>
<span class="comment-date" dir="ltr"><span title="2013-09-04 11:08:16Z, License: CC BY-SA 3.0" class="relativetime-clean">Sep 4 '13 at 11:08</span></span>
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<span class="comment-copy">@ŁukaszLech check with the site's Terms of Service. If the TOS allows you to scrape or crawl the site with robots, then it's OK. Most sites do not allow this, however. Get permission from the site owner.</span>
– <span class="comment-user">user102937</span>
<span class="comment-date" dir="ltr"><span title="2013-09-04 14:19:54Z, License: CC BY-SA 3.0" class="relativetime-clean">Sep 4 '13 at 14:19</span></span>
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<span class="comment-copy">@RobertHarvey what legal meaning have the Terms of Service? Everyone can write anything, but it doesn't mean that everything will have legal power. If someone writes you are not allowed to view the site barefoot, such statement is meaningless.</span>
– <a href="/users/155074/danubian-sailor"
title="13,758 reputation"
class="comment-user">Danubian Sailor</a>
<span class="comment-date" dir="ltr"><span title="2013-09-04 18:30:06Z, License: CC BY-SA 3.0" class="relativetime-clean">Sep 4 '13 at 18:30</span></span>
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<span class="comment-copy">@ŁukaszLech: You're just trying to get me to say that it's somehow legal, so that you can do whatever you want with the site, against the site owner's wishes. I'm not going to say that. It doesn't have to be illegal to be something that we don't want to promote on Stack Overflow, so stop asking for legal justifications.</span>
– <span class="comment-user">user102937</span>
<span class="comment-date" dir="ltr"><span title="2013-09-04 18:35:14Z, License: CC BY-SA 3.0" class="relativetime-clean">Sep 4 '13 at 18:35</span></span>
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<p>I'm hard pressed to find a solution better than the one you did, which is to provide technical guidance for the process in general and add a disclaimer (I'd prefer at the beginning of the answer vs. at the end) warning the developer to consider the legal and ethical ramifications of what they're doing.</p>
<p>At a previous job of mine this was actually a bit of an issue. We were aggregating public criminal records and in many cases that involved screen scraping on various jurisdiction websites. Some of the websites had statements indicating that the information was their property and that scraping was against the terms of service.</p>
<p>In that particular case, our company had a liability attorney on staff and he assured us that the statements are of no concern. The company made the decision to go forward with it against the advice of the developers. (Makes sense, he is after all the company's attorney. And the data <em>is</em> public records.) In one case it caused our scraper to be IP-banned by a server, but I don't know of any other problems that came about as a result.</p>
<p>Long story short, we as a community (both employees of and users of Stack Exchange) are in <em>no</em> position to offer legal advice of any kind. We aren't experts in law, we have no knowledge of the specific case, etc. Even if the site in question explicitly states that scraping is entirely illegal and violators will be killed to the fullest extent of the law, etc. that doesn't mean that the statement actually has any legal value.</p>
<p>The best we can do is offer technical advice and strongly urge the reader to seek legal counsel for non-technical concerns.</p>
<p><strong>Edit:</strong> In re-reading your question, you make a very interesting point at the end. The idea of ensuring that respondents make such disclaimers. For that, I see two options for Stack Exchange:</p>
<ol>
<li>Have site-wide disclaimers (surely they already do, but maybe re-think the visibility of them) indicating that this isn't legal advice, etc., etc.</li>
<li>Encourage (or at least not frown upon) users to edit other users' answers to include such disclaimers.</li>
</ol>
<p>The former solution seems like the best. I'd hate to see the long-term results of the latter solution. Users would get upset that their answers are being filled with legal jargon when they don't see why it should. Answer meanings could be slightly changed by the edits, which does a disservice to the original respondent. Etc.</p>
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