9th Circuit holds that scraping a public website does not violate the CFAA [pdf] (cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov)

Article summary

The 9th Circuit Court has ruled that scraping a public website does not violate the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). The court's decision is based on the idea that accessing a public website is not equivalent to trespassing on private property. The ruling has implications for web scraping and data collection. The court's decision is seen as a victory for those who argue that publicly available data should be accessible to anyone.

Main themes

• web scraping
• CFAA
• trespassing analogy
• public data access
• access control

What commenters say

• Accessing a public website is not equivalent to trespassing on private property, and therefore should not be considered a violation of the CFAA.
• The lack of access control on a website does not implicitly give users authorization to access the site, and website owners have a right to control who accesses their site.
• The analogy between physical trespassing and web scraping is flawed, as accessing a website is more like making a request to a server than entering a physical property.
• The CFAA is not the right tool to protect website owners from unwanted scraping, and Congress needs to clarify what the law is intended to protect against.
• A website owner's failure to implement access controls does not necessarily mean that they have given implicit permission for others to access their site.
• The idea that a website is 'public' does not necessarily mean that all of its contents are intended for public access, and website owners may still have legitimate reasons to restrict access to certain areas of their site.
• The court's decision highlights the need for clearer guidelines on what constitutes a violation of the CFAA, and how website owners can protect their sites from unwanted scraping while still allowing public access to their data.