As businesses continue to build their presence online, screen scraping is becoming more prevalent. Screen scraping is the use of software or code to take data from another website. For example, popular platforms like Skyscanner or booking.com usually take price data on flights and accommodation and display it on their websites. However, Australian copyright laws or the website owner’s terms and conditions may forbid you from screen scraping. This article explains the legal aspects of scraping data from another business’ website and the precautions you should take.
Am I Violating the Law by Screen Scraping?
Australian copyright law safeguards ‘original creative works’, including:
- written works;
- visual images;
- music; and
- moving images.
Copyright can also protect documents such as government reports and legal forms. When determining whether copyright protects a creative work, the work does not need to be intricate or of high quality. It only needs to demonstrate originality and not be copied from another source.
Is Data an ‘Original Work’?
Data is usually fact-based and primarily consists of statistics or numbers. As a result, copyright usually does not protect data.
Examples of such data include:
- the consumer price index for a particular quarter;
- monthly house price increases in a city;
- the number of students in a class; or
- the count of films released in a year.
Generally, the law does not consider this an original work because it merely represents real-world information.
What Data is an ‘Original Work’?
However, data can be an original work in some circumstances. For example, if you organise data in a unique manner that reflects someone's creativity, the law might consider that data an ‘original work’.
Examples of organised data that copyright protects include;
- accounting forms;
- sequences of numbers or letters for a bingo game; or
- a car parts catalogue.
Consequently, screen scraping data from a website is unlikely to infringe copyright unless it involves protected, creatively organised data. Infringing someone’s copyright means using their copyright-protected material without their permission.
Are There Exceptions to Copyright Law?
In the rare event that your screen scraping infringes copyright, your use could fall under an exception to copyright infringement. Australian copyright law refers to these exceptions as 'fair dealing.'
The four ‘fair dealing’ exceptions include using copyright-protected materials for:
- research or study;
- review or critique;
- parody or satire; and
- reporting the news.
For instance, a journalist scraping original data sets to report potential price-gouging among airlines could potentially rely on the exception for reporting the news. However, if you are scraping data for business purposes, the fair dealing exceptions may not apply.
What if a Website Explicitly Bans Screen Scraping?
Even if screen scraping is not always illegal under Australian copyright law, website owners can use their terms of use to prohibit data scraping. These terms of use often appear as website pop-ups. The pop-ups typically state that by continuing to use the website, you accept the terms of use.
These terms can explicitly forbid:
- data scraping;
- copying;
- hacking; or
- any form of data extraction.
Violating these terms would result in you breaching the website’s terms of use. As a result, the website owner may take legal action against you. If the data on the website qualifies as original work, copyright infringement claims may also arise.
Therefore, it is advisable not to screen scrape from websites with explicit terms of use against that activity. If you do engage in screen scraping, ensure you only extract factual information.
Key Takeaways
Screen scraping is generally lawful if you extract strictly factual information from other websites. However, if a website's terms of use prohibit screen scraping, even for factual data, it is advisable to avoid data scraping. Otherwise, you could face potential breach of contract and copyright infringement claims.
For assistance with your legal obligations, LegalVision’s experienced IT lawyers can assist as part of their membership. For a low monthly fee, you will have unlimited access to lawyers who can answer your questions and draft and review your documents. Call LegalVision today on 1800 296 912 or visit their membership page.
