In this case it was "big company" versus "small company who is selling the same data." The real issue seems to be that "small company who is selling the same data" feels that "big company" stole from them (instead, they should have bought the data). They did fight back legally, via a cease-and-desist which "big company" complied with, so they kind of won.
Personally, my major concern is an article on something as seemingly trivial as web scraping making its way into the Wall Street Journal.
As you point out, the legal protections are there, but from a technical standpoint how do you prevent that? DRM in HTML6 (</sarcasm>)? I'm concerned because websites that prevent me from right-clicking to "view source" or already annoying enough.
It's almost always going to violate the site's TOS, so if you're a business that depends on regularly scraping sites without permission, prepare to change your business model or be sued. (eg. Octopart vs Mouser and Digikey)
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 27.9 ms ] threadIs it that this is still a legal gray area, or is it that big companies can roll over small companies and individuals?
Ticketmaster - http://itlaw.wikia.com/wiki/Ticketmaster_v._Tickets.com
Cairo v. CossMedia - http://itlaw.wikia.com/wiki/Cairo_v._CrossMedia_Services
Personally, my major concern is an article on something as seemingly trivial as web scraping making its way into the Wall Street Journal.
As you point out, the legal protections are there, but from a technical standpoint how do you prevent that? DRM in HTML6 (</sarcasm>)? I'm concerned because websites that prevent me from right-clicking to "view source" or already annoying enough.
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