Can you be sued for scraping?

Can you be sued for scraping?

Are you a fan of scraping other people's data to build marketplaces?

We're currently being sued in Australia for scraping the data of a company that sells a luxury wedding registry service and is a member of the Wedding Directory Association (WDA). We're also being sued by Microsoft in the US for scraping their data.

Can I be sued for scraping? Yes, if: You are using personal data about another person, then that data is protected by Australian privacy laws. (The data in question is from a web page that includes information such as name, address, phone number and other personal data).

And other personal data you use to provide the service that scrapes the data is used in a way that is not in compliance with Australian privacy laws. In the UK, you'd probably be OK. They have strong protections in place, and we've used a lot of their data as part of our research into this.

Scraping other people's data has been allowed in the past - before personal data was regulated in Australia, we'd scrape content in books, magazines and newspapers. For example, book reviewers were given the right to include quotes from other reviews when summarizing their reviews. We've scraped from book reviews on GoodReads and other sites. We've also scraped data from web pages where authors post an item listing (like Amazon), or reviews where they've posted their own reviews (like TripAdvisor).

If the scraped data meets the following criteria, then you can be sued for scraping: you're the one responsible for making it available online (for instance, if you collect and make available data from other people, then you're the one who has to control that access). The other person would reasonably expect to be able to remove their data from you (eg you don't sell your data, or you ask the original author to remove their data after using it, or you post a notice on a site that the data should be removed). Your service has only been used with consent by the other person, eg they agreed to having their data scraped and published online. The scraped data you're providing meets Australian privacy laws.