Facebook v Power Ventures is probably the strongest anti-scraping ruling, because it held that a simple CAPTCHA is sufficient to qualify as “bypassing technical measures” so as to qualify as hacking under CFAA.
YouTube has a number of technical controls to prevent downloading, and it’s always been considered iffy to mass-download YT vids because all the downloader tools (usually) incorporate some kind of means to bypass their protection schemes.
So far, has a single legal challenge against scraping ever been successful?
Unfortunately, yes.
Facebook v Power Ventures is probably the strongest anti-scraping ruling, because it held that a simple CAPTCHA is sufficient to qualify as “bypassing technical measures” so as to qualify as hacking under CFAA.
YouTube has a number of technical controls to prevent downloading, and it’s always been considered iffy to mass-download YT vids because all the downloader tools (usually) incorporate some kind of means to bypass their protection schemes.