The Copyright Defense Against Web Scraping

Wendy Ray, Nate Tan, and Jacob Nagy authored an article for Bloomberg Law addressing how copyright law can be used to combat web scraping in view of recent cases limiting the applicability of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) to web scraping.

“Until recently, companies relied on the CFAA as the first line of defense against web scraping, asserting that web scraping constituted using a computer to take electronic data in violation of the act,” the authors wrote. “The U.S. Supreme Court in Van Buren v. United States, however, functionally rejected this application of the CFAA. Although Van Buren did not directly address web scraping, the Supreme Court’s opinion clarified that the CFAA only applies if an individual ‘obtains information in particular areas of the computer…that are off limits to [them.’”

Read the full article.