this post was submitted on 16 Apr 2026
6 points (75.0% liked)

Programming

26523 readers
338 users here now

Welcome to the main community in programming.dev! Feel free to post anything relating to programming here!

Cross posting is strongly encouraged in the instance. If you feel your post or another person's post makes sense in another community cross post into it.

Hope you enjoy the instance!

Rules

Rules

  • Follow the programming.dev instance rules
  • Keep content related to programming in some way
  • If you're posting long videos try to add in some form of tldr for those who don't want to watch videos

Wormhole

Follow the wormhole through a path of communities !webdev@programming.dev

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
snowe@programming.dev
Ategon@programming.dev
UlrikHD@programming.dev
bugsmith@programming.dev
Spyro@programming.dev
6
Are we doing crimes when scrapping data online? For example public available music? (jeferson.me)
submitted 23 hours ago by Shin@piefed.social to c/programming@programming.dev
16 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

I'm trying to get to a reason on this, but my point reach to a limit.

I've the feels that scraping the internet for public accessible data, like for example open and public music on Spotify wouldn't be a crime, but the distribution would be. At the same token, this is seem as a crime, while Google does the same and nothing happens, even worse, if this get regulated, Google would have a huge advantage on anyone else.

So, my deeper question is: "Is copyright dead?"

top 16 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] TehPers@beehaw.org 1 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago) (1 children)

There's no obvious answer to your question without more information (for example, where are you?) but I'm not aware of scraping being illegal anywhere, with some exceptions. For example, in the US (where I am), as long as you're not doing "illegal hacking" to scrape your data, you're probably fine.

There are TOSs that websites like to impose as well. If you have to agree to one to access any data, you should follow it. Breaking the TOS isn't really "illegal" in a criminal sense (in the US), but you may expose yourself to anything from being blocked from the site to a lawsuit. Bypassing blocks might also be illegal, though you'd have to speak to a lawyer to know more about that.

[–] Shin@piefed.social 1 points 2 hours ago

That's the point, my focus is on the "Europe" as a general place, since they need to sync the "law" to some degree, there is different levels, but the base line are the same.

Most public data, like all the music in Spotify don't require a cookie. So I could in theory scrape all the Spotify music to "listem later". This wouldn't be "illigal", but if that's the case Annas Archive should be "fine"... (I know that they are distributing, and this is the fight)

But, if they scrapped the music, and I scrape we would have the same "dataset", so if I download the Annas "dataset", would it be different from mine? So if I prefer to download the Anna's dataset instead of scrape myself, would this be illigal? They aren't selling (on the contrary of Google).

There is way to many questions in my head :(

[–] pinball_wizard@lemmy.zip 2 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

Legally, check your local laws or just be sure to cover your ass with tor or a VPN with an anonymous core.

Ethically, just obey Wheaton's Law: "Don't be a dick."

With web scraping, I can think of two ways Wheaton's law applies:

  1. Scrapers should blend into existing background web traffic. They should be slow enough to not overwhelm their servers. This requires babysitting any new scraper until one is sure it is tuned to be safe for the scraped site.

  2. Any scraped content shouldn't be re-hosted in a way that harms the original content creators. Sharing is lovely. Harming artists sucks. Finding the right balance between preservation and respect can take some thought, but it's usually actually a pretty wide road.

[–] one_old_coder@piefed.social 13 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago) (1 children)

It's illegal but all AI companies do it more than you'll ever do. You have my permission.

I still buy on Bandcamp because they deserve it.

[–] TehPers@beehaw.org 1 points 3 hours ago

It's illegal

Sauce? Also, where?

[–] esc@piefed.social 13 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

I can't care less about copyright and 'crimes' of copying.

[–] middlemanSI@lemmy.world -5 points 22 hours ago (3 children)

I guess you never created an original of anything? Maybe I read that wrong..

[–] Luminous5481@anarchist.nexus 8 points 19 hours ago (2 children)

I've written more than one piece of software, and plenty of wordpress themes. I always release them without a license, for anyone to use however they want. copyright is capitalist nonsense and only exists to gatekeep creative freedom and stifle innovation.

[–] eager_eagle@lemmy.world 1 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago) (1 children)

you should release it as public domain; unfortunately others can't "legally" use anything just because they have access to it (no license).

yeah, it's absolutely stupid capitalist theater

[–] Luminous5481@anarchist.nexus 1 points 4 hours ago

I don't care about laws or legality, and neither should you.

[–] middlemanSI@lemmy.world 3 points 18 hours ago

I hate capitalism and the way it devalues people, reducing them to consumers. The fact remains we live in it, and have to eat. If you release everything to AI crawlers, what do you eat, assuming you don't lay tiles for a living, which would make you "rich" but very busy..

[–] esc@piefed.social 4 points 20 hours ago

I did, obtaining a monopoly on it would go counter my beliefs. Anyway originality is overrated and very hard to measure. Especially now.

[–] Shin@piefed.social 5 points 21 hours ago

With the slow-death of copyright, what else is left? And if not dead, how can we reclaim it? I've so many questions, and I can't focus on a single thing :(

[–] misk@piefed.social 5 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago)

Not only copyright is dead but so is licensing of things in general. This means there’ll be less original work from both commercial and non-commercial projects. Commercially there won’t be ways to profit so why bother. On the libre licensing front why would you contribute code to GPL licensed projects or release art under Creative Commons if it’s going to be license washed anyway?

[–] Luminous5481@anarchist.nexus 3 points 20 hours ago

no, in almost all cases internet piracy is not a crime. it is a civil issue. now if you were scraping information that wasn't public, that could be a crime depending on the circumstances.

[–] phonics@lemmy.world 1 points 22 hours ago

Google would have some kind of licence in place I suspect. But what about people with photographic memory?