Internet Law Scholar Eric Goldman Analyzes the Legal Fragility of Web Scraping

Web scraping powers foundational online technologies ranging from search engines and price comparison bots to artificial intelligence model training. Yet despite its widespread adoption, the legal rules governing automated data extraction remain deeply unsettled, according to veteran Internet law professor Eric Goldman. In introductory remarks for a Reddit AMA on the r/WebScrapingInsider subreddit, shared via Hacker News (https://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2026/10/my-reddit-ama-on-the-law-of-web-scraping.htm), Goldman noted that data gathering on the open web exists in a precarious legal state under U.S. law.

Goldman, who began practicing Internet law in 1994 and has taught the discipline since 1996, noted that client inquiries regarding scraping have crossed his desk since roughly 1997. He framed the issue around conflicting policy interests: while property owners generally expect control over their physical infrastructure, open access to public data delivers critical social utility and preserves the low-friction navigation that enabled the Internet's success. Anti-scraping efforts, he argued, frequently risk anti-competitive outcomes by attempting to construct proprietary, intellectual-property-like rights over data that does not qualify for copyright protection.

At the same time, high-volume scraping presents real operational and legal hazards. Automated extraction can resemble a denial-of-service attack on server infrastructure, enable massive copying that may trigger copyright infringement, and result in major invasions of consumer privacy.

Doctrinally, Goldman highlighted the confusion surrounding trespass to chattels claims applied to server hardware. In his classes, Goldman teaches a four-step framework: establishing physical ownership of the chattel (the servers), proving use through packet transmission, determining whether implied authorization was revoked, and showing legally recognizable harm. Because courts have handled authorization and harm unpredictably, Goldman noted that he removed longtime staples such as Intel v. Hamidi and Register.com v. Verio from his casebook around 2024, calling the doctrine in its current state nearly 'unteachable.'

Goldman summarized the fundamental paradox for developers and tech platforms with a single tagline: 'Scraping is ubiquitous but not clearly legal.' For any scraping campaign to remain lawful, it must successfully survive every applicable legal doctrine, including trespass, copyright, and privacy laws. Looking ahead, Goldman also cautioned that expanding global age-authentication mandates could further restrict scraping by forcing open web content behind identity checkpoints.