In 2021, the two big stories in the world of web scraping and the law were the Supreme Court’s decision in Van Buren v. United States, and the Supreme Court’s decision to vacate the hiQ Labs opinion from the 9th Circuit in 2019 and remand it for further consideration light of Van Buren. As I … Read More
Web Scraping and Antitrust Law In 2019, in what was at the time the most important legal precedent in the United States with web scraping, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals wrote: We agree with the district court that giving companies like LinkedIn free rein to decide, on any basis, who can collect and use … Read More
Since the early 2000s, the most important federal law governing web scraping in the United States has been the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (“CFAA”). For host websites that wanted to stop scraping, the CFAA has been the go-to legal remedy to threaten web scrapers. For the first time since the law was enacted in … Read More
The first rule of the law of web scraping is this: Details matter. As I’ve written before, there are dozens of laws associated with web scraping. As such, no single “three-part test” can tell you whether what you’re doing is legal or not. The only way to properly assess that is to look into the … Read More
Web scraping has recently come under scrutiny from regulatory agencies that investigate securities laws. Increasingly, investment firms have been using web scraping as an alternative form of data collection. To bolster more traditional data sets like SEC filings and financial statements, investment firms have been going directly to websites and online resources to get information … Read More
Note: The numbers relating to Delaware’s tax rates below are accurate at the time this article was drafted. Delaware may change its charges; you should confirm those numbers at the time of filing. Delaware’s annual tax on corporations, which it calls a franchise tax, is due March 1st each year. There are two methods of … Read More
Facebook aggressively monitors web scraping on its platforms. And they aren’t shy about sending out cease and desist letters when they believe someone is violating their terms of service. After the Ninth Circuit’s decision in hiQ Labs, Inc. v. LinkedIn Corp. in 2019, however, there might have been some question whether a court (and, in … Read More
I recently wrote a post at Professor Eric Goldman’s Law and Technology Blog about an important web scraping case out of Florida from earlier this year. If you’re in the web-scraping business, you’ll definitely want to check that out here. This blog post is for informational purposes only. The views expressed in this post may … Read More
Date of Last Update: July 20, 2023 When I first published this guide, in the summer of 2020, I wrote that the recent trend had been toward greater permissiveness with web scraping. That sentence isn’t as true today as the day when I first wrote it. Recent policy trends have wavered. The few jurisdictions where … Read More
In the past month, much of the world has shifted to remote work practices and so much has been disrupted. Here, at McCarthy Law Group, we have continued to provide our legal services, uninterrupted, in the midst of this disruption to the outside world. And we’ll continue to do so. We’re able to do so, … Read More
