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My Reddit AMA on the Law of Web Scraping

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Context

What happened: Law professor Eric Goldman hosted a Reddit AMA on r/WebScrapingInsider about the law of web scraping, covering trespass to chattels, Why it matters: He says the law of scraping is a mess, that anti-scraping doctrines threaten to turn browsing into a permissioned experience, and that he removed Intel v. Hamidi and Register.com v. Verio from his casebook around 2024. Key numbers: First email account 1991; first Internet Law paper 1993; practice from 1994; teaching from 1996; full-time professor since 2002; first scraping client question around 1997; casebook change around 2024.

What changed

Law professor Eric Goldman hosted a Reddit AMA on r/WebScrapingInsider about the law of web scraping, covering trespass to chattels,

Why it matters

He says the law of scraping is a mess, that anti-scraping doctrines threaten to turn browsing into a permissioned experience, and that he removed Intel v. Hamidi and Register.com v. Verio from his casebook around 2024. Key numbers: First email account 1991; first Internet Law paper 1993; practice from 1994; teaching from 1996; full-time professor since 2002; first scraping client question around 1997; casebook change around 2024.

Sources