“Scraping” information from a publicly available website does not violate the federal anti-hacking law, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled.
The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, reporting the decision, writes: “While the opinion won’t be the last word on the subject, it begins to dispel some of the ambiguities that … the powerful too often wield to chill investigative journalism online.”