Web Scraping is Officially Legal
and why Public APIs are now even more important
Officially Legal
Web scraping is now officially legal in the United States after a ruling by the country’s appeals court. This means that companies can now harvest data from public websites without fear of legal repercussions.
The ruling comes after a case involving hiQ Labs, a data analytics company that scrape public profiles from LinkedIn. LinkedIn had sued hiQ Labs, claiming that the scraping violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). But in a unanimous decision, a three-judge panel from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that hiQ Labs could continue scraping data from LinkedIn.
The ruling is a victory for hiQ Labs, but it also has wider implications for the data scraping industry. Until now, there has been no clear legal precedent on whether web scraping is allowed under U.S. law. With this ruling, web scraping is now officially legal.
Green Light
This ruling is likely to have a positive impact on the data scraping industry. Companies that have been scraping data illegally will now be able to do so without fear of legal repercussions. And companies that have been hesitant to enter the data scraping market will now have the green light to do so.
Spur More Public APIs
The ruling is also likely to spur more companies to create public APIs. An API is a software interface that allows two applications to communicate with each other. By creating an API, companies can give third-party developers access to their data in a controlled and safe manner.
The LinkedIn case is not the only time web scraping has been in the news recently. In July, the European Union’s Court of Justice ruled that a company called GDPR Solutions could not scrape data from public websites without the consent of the website’s owner. The ruling was seen as a victory for the EU’s new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which gives individuals the right to control how their personal data is used.
Why Significant
The ruling in the LinkedIn case is significant because it is the first time a U.S. court has weighed in on the legality of web scraping. Until now, the legality of web scraping has been a murky area. With this ruling, web scraping is now officially legal in the United States. This ruling is likely to have a positive impact on the data scraping industry and could spur more companies to create public APIs.
