Terms and condition for web scraping I intend to scrape (download all articles) from a newspaper website which has some terms and conditions listed in its footer. The part which seems to be in my interest is as follows: You shall not copy, reproduce, republish, disassemble, decompile, reverse engineer, download, post, broadcast, transmit, make available to the public, or otherwise use the content of this website in any way except for your own personal, non-commercial use. You shall not adapt, alter or create a derivative work from any content of this website except for your own personal, non-commercial use. Any other use of the content of this website requires the prior written permission of XYZ So does this also mean that I cannot scrape data from website and perform some analyses (machine learning and stuff) and use it to generate a report for Research purposes Commercial purposes
Yes, it does. Using the downloaded content, whether it was scraped or individually downloaded one file at a time, for research or for commercial purposes would violate that TOS provision (unless some other provision contradicts it, or you obtain specific permission). The site owner could sue you for such a violation, should the owner become aware of it. I do not think it would be likely to be a criminal offense, depending on the jurisdiction.
Twitter's terms says the following: Except as permitted through the Twitter Services, these Terms, or the terms provided on dev.twitter.com, you have to use the Twitter API if you want to reproduce, modify, create derivative works, distribute, sell, transfer, publicly display, publicly perform, transmit, or otherwise use the Twitter Services or Content on the Twitter Services. [...] You may not do any of the following while accessing or using the Services: (i) access, tamper with, or use non-public areas of the Services, Twitter’s computer systems, or the technical delivery systems of Twitter’s providers; (ii) probe, scan, or test the vulnerability of any system or network or breach or circumvent any security or authentication measures; (iii) access or search or attempt to access or search the Services by any means (automated or otherwise) other than through our currently available, published interfaces that are provided by Twitter (and only pursuant to the applicable terms and conditions), unless you have been specifically allowed to do so in a separate agreement with Twitter (NOTE: crawling the Services is permissible if done in accordance with the provisions of the robots.txt file, however, scraping the Services without the prior consent of Twitter is expressly prohibited); (iv) forge any TCP/IP packet header or any part of the header information in any email or posting, or in any way use the Services to send altered, deceptive or false source-identifying information; or (v) interfere with, or disrupt, (or attempt to do so), the access of any user, host or network, including, without limitation, sending a virus, overloading, flooding, spamming, mail-bombing the Services, or by scripting the creation of Content in such a manner as to interfere with or create an undue burden on the Services. facebook is a bit harsher: You will not engage in Automated Data Collection without Facebook's express written permission. So just go and use the APIs meant for the explicit purpose of automatic data collection.
It depends on what information you are sharing, how you got it, and what rights the business asserts over the information. For example, if it is content created by the business and they claim copyright protection you can only use it without their permission in accordance with Fair use exceptions. If you obtain the information through some limited/conditional access agreement you would be subject to the terms of that agreement. As always: If you want a legal opinion specific to your use case you need to consult a lawyer in your jurisdiction.
It doesn't make a difference if the product is free or commercial use, if it's initiated by a company or an individual. What you are considering would be a &quot;derivative work&quot; and without explicit permission from the copyright holder, it is considered a violation.
The second inferred question is &quot;How does Twitter conform to GDPR?&quot; See the Twitter GDPR FAQ for details on if Twitter is a data controller or a data processor, how Twitter complies with the legal requirements for transferring data, etc. Re: the original question regarding scraping and distributing Twitter data: Read Twitter's Twitter Terms of Service, which is a legally binding contract for use of their service. By using Twitter (or accessing Twitter without an account), you agree to that contract. Twitter very clearly states what they allow as legal uses of their service; pertaining to scraping and selling and/or sharing data: You also agree not to misuse our Services, for example, by... (iii) access or search or attempt to access or search the Services by any means (automated or otherwise) other than through our currently available, published interfaces that are provided by Twitter (and only pursuant to the applicable terms and conditions), unless you have been specifically allowed to do so in a separate agreement with Twitter (NOTE: crawling the Services is permissible if done in accordance with the provisions of the robots.txt file, however, scraping the Services without the prior consent of Twitter is expressly prohibited); ... If you want to reproduce, modify, create derivative works, distribute, sell, transfer, publicly display, publicly perform, transmit, or otherwise use the Services or Content on the Services, you must use the interfaces and instructions we provide, except as permitted through the Twitter Services, these Terms, or the terms provided for (developers) So you can scrape Twitter with prior consent, or scrape according to the robots.txt file, which shows Twitter's limits on what you can scrape. If you don't follow the TOS, you risk Twitter taking legal (civil, possibly criminal, according to jurisdiction) action against you.
You've really got two questions here: 1) "Is it an invasion of privacy to know that I'm using an ad blocker?", and 2) "Is it discrimination to refuse service based on what software I'm running?". Taking them in order: Because of how HTTP/HTML works, there are essentially two ways for a server operator to know what software you are running. Your browser announces that it's running something. This usually takes the form of a modified User-Agent header. I'm not aware of any privacy laws that consider "Person A told me something" to be an invasion of Person A's privacy. They guess it based on the actions your browser takes. For example, if the website gets a request for a page, and the site's ad network does not get a matching request for an ad, the server deduces that the user is running an ad blocker. Since this is based on things that the server operator could reasonably be expected to be informed of, it isn't an invasion of privacy under any law I'm aware of. Is it discrimination? Yes. But not all discrimination is illegal. In general, only discrimination based on protected categories (race, sex, etc.) is prohibited, and I can't imagine a jurisdiction making "choice of browser add-ons" to be one of those categories, not least because it's something the person being discriminated against can easily change.
In my opinion, you are totally free to publish the information. There are two areas of law that can be cosidered - private and public law. In the private law area, you can be liable for revealing trade secrets, but only if you agreed to keep them by a contract. Trade secrets do not exist by themselves (there are minor exceptions, eg. in competition law, but those do not concern us), they must be protected by contracts. Another private limitations, like libel laws, won't apply here. This is not uncommon, but not in cars - you can find clauses like these in software license agreements. Then there is the public area. Is there any regulation, any policy of the state, that prevents you from publishing it? I am not aware you whole legal code of your state, but I doubt there is. It would be a harsh limitation of freedom of speech. Even if the modification could lead to illegal effect (like, modifying toy weapon to kill by rising its power...) it would be only illegal under very rare circumstances. To conclude it - freedom of speech can be limited only if there is sufficient public interest to do so, and I don't see any.
You automatically have copyright protection for what you create. A collection of numeric answers to math equations probably would not qualify (lack of requisite creativity), but certainly anything that counts as a "paper" is protected.