<br><br><div><span class="gmail_quote">On 9/11/07, <b class="gmail_sendername">Gabe Rubin</b> <<a href="mailto:gaberubin@gmail.com">gaberubin@gmail.com</a>> wrote:</span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
On 9/11/07, Brett Kosinski <<a href="mailto:fancypantalons@gmail.com">fancypantalons@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br><br>> However, none of this is to say that screen scraping is legal. In the US,<br>> it's apparent that one can run afoul of the CFAA, through which a number of
<br>> cases were found in favour of the plaintiff. In other cases, trespass came<br>> into play. Either way, this fits with my original supposition: that<br><br>But why would it be trespass to chattels? Because the TOS
<br>specifically prohibit that activity? Absent that, there a court<br>likely would not hold that way.</blockquote><div><br>Yeah, that's a good point. According to that page, some courts found that scraping constitutes trespass to chattels because a computer system amounts to "private property", to which companies "[grant] conditional access", which I read to mean that the TOS provides the conditions under which the computer system may be accessed.
<br><br>However, to be pedantic (as I am wont to do), even in this case, the TOS still does not form a binding contract between the two parties, at least in the traditional sense. :)<br><br>Brett.<br></div></div><br>