Website Data Scraping: Evolving Legal, Case Law, and Business Challenges, User Agreement Enforcement, Safeguards

Description

As the amount of data grows exponentially, data analytics plays a critical role in the way a business is run. Data scraping is a technique used to extract data and other content from a website (both public and non-public) using automated software or "bots." Bots can extract huge amounts of data in a short period. Data scraping has countless applications, including for marketing, research, sales insights, academia, archivists, and others.

From a business standpoint, some companies engage in data scraping to perform more efficiently, increase profits, or other strategic, lawful decisions. However, others scrape financial data and other personally identifiable information (PII) for nefarious reasons and find themselves on the receiving end of legal action under various legal theories. Website owners'/operators' claims generally fall under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), breach of contract, copyright infringement, and common torts.

Because privacy laws are constantly changing, compliance is very challenging and organizations' privacy risks have skyrocketed along with larger fines for compliance failures. Building a privacy framework requires transparency and particularly sound policies, procedures, and other security measures for monitoring and enforcing website user agreements and capturing user consent.

Listen as our distinguished panel of attorneys addresses data scaping, applicable legal theories, and the importance of website user agreement enforcement. The panel will offer best practices for navigating the legal risks associated with data scraping and how privacy policies and procedures should be implemented and reviewed regularly as business practices and laws change.