Is screen scraping illegal?

I know this is kind of a gray area and I have seen some lawsuits emerge where some software companies are scraping information off of the web for commercial use.

Example - there are plenty of shareware sniping tools that scrape the information from the **** listings in order to provide sniping capability, and there are plenty of DVD collection software packages that scrape the details from imdb.com and other sites for the dvd content and cover images. All of these tools are for commercial use.

So how does one know where to draw the line?

I have just developed a (non commercial) application that relies on data from another site yet my application is not for commercial use, I am just passing that data on in a different format. Does that make it illegal? I checked the site and there is only one line of copyright text but it does not say in any of their site terms and conditions that the information displayed is copyrighted or can be distributed. Is it illegal to make a screen print of that one page? Is it illegal to save the web page? Is it even illegal to re-type the data that is on display, put it in an email and send it to someone?

Where is the line drawn? Anyone know?

On a side note -- my application hits a particular site every 5 minutes throughout the day - equating to about 100 hits a day. Is my IP likely to be sniffed out by that site's web administrator or is that too low a hit count to get discovered?

Just try it. then let us know how it turns out. Since you're not using it for som e high-powered commercial application i don't think you run a high risk by giving it a try.

also, please share the information if this technique works efficiently for you and code you use...cheers

you'll have to read the terms and greements for the site. There may be copyright notices on it.

You could try contacting the site people directly and explaining your situation. Depending on the situation, but its possible something can be worked out. For example amaroK, the Linux music player, has a feature that lets it automatically search and get a CD cover image from amazon.com. amazon.com let them do that, and keep the image on the user's computer for 90 days. Actaully I think originally they had it where it just got the image forever, and I am not sure that they even asked for the permission from amazon. But maybe later amazon talked w/ them or something (but they didnt sue or anything), and now they are allowed to get the image and keep it for 90 days. I hope something like this is what you meant.

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