> the vast majority of Web scraping efforts are to build businesses on top of other organizations hard work and innovation.
Not really. Scraping just gets data, not code, so it's hard to support this argument. The anti-scraping view is that the right to use the data rests with the company that collected it, but I don't think that view is held by most people.
If you are arguing that an organization's data is worthless but only their code has worth, then I'm not quite sure where to go from this point in this discussion, other than to say that is crazy.
The data is obviously valuable, but they don't necessarily deserve a monopoly on that data, since that data primarily belongs to the users who created the data; so while it's understandable that organizations want to restrict that data, we have no obligation (moral or otherwise) to respect that desire.
Exactly. Your list of friends does not belong to Facebook, it belongs to you.
I am sure Facebook believes they deserve a monopoly for having obtained it first. They do not. The market forces you to compete for every dollar you earn, so you have every right to expect Facebook to compete for every dollar they earn, and "I touched it first therefore it's mine!" is not competition.
But, but, but..... you agreed that Facebook does own your friends list when you signed up for an account and started giving them all your data.
If I run a restaurant, and I stipulate that when you walk through the doors and place an order I reserve the right to take your picture and post it on the bulletin board, why would you place the order and then get pissed off when I post a picture of you on the bulletin board? And why would you be mad at me if I stipulated that no one else can use a camera in my restaurant? Terms of service, my friend. Unless prohibited by legislation, I can stipulate how things run in my restaurant.
If your bulletin board somehow let you monopolize the restaurant industry (? lol) then we should absolutely vote for some politicians to boot your entitled ass back into competition.
Obviously, the idea of a bulletin board granting a restaurant an effective monopoly is ridiculous so your analogy is trash, but even if your analogy wasn't trash, your conclusion would still be wrong.
I'm not saying that the data isn't valuable, but that possession of the data, valuable though it may be, is not related to the organization's hard work or innovation. For the most part, any control rights to the data likely rest or should rest with the people who provided it to the company.
Meta claiming that all of the photos on Instagram are Meta's property does not comport with current IP law or the views/opinions of most of the users on Instagram who do own the copyrights to those photos.
You really shouldn't be able to sue anyone for use or copying of data to which you do not hold copyright. The stuff on FB is licensed to FB by the people who own it (their users).
Not really. Scraping just gets data, not code, so it's hard to support this argument. The anti-scraping view is that the right to use the data rests with the company that collected it, but I don't think that view is held by most people.