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Web scraping, the practice of extracting data from websites, exists in a murky legal realm. Recently, a significant ruling from the US District Court in Delaware shed light on the potential pitfalls of this practice. Booking.com was found to have violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) by scraping data from Ryanair’s website. In response, Booking.com attempted to countersue Ryanair for defamation after being labeled as an "OTA pirate"—a term reflecting their alleged misappropriation of Ryanair’s content for profit.
Despite Booking.com’s rebuttal, the court dismissed their defamation claims. This incident is far from isolated; web scrapers have faced numerous legal battles, raising essential questions regarding the ethics and legality of their actions.