The second “circuit split” we’ll look into in this series is disagreements among federal circuits with how to apply the DMCA. 17 U.S.C. § 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) has a series of provisions aimed at targeting parties that engage in “anti-circumvention” of protected works. This law was designed in the early days ... Read More| McCarthy Law Group
This post explains why §301 copyright preemption splits matter and previews how each circuit treats contract‑based scraping claims. I’ve written over 3000 words on this subject before, but this is probably the most understudied and under-litigated issue in the world of web scraping. Preemption means that federal law overrides state law when the two are ... Read More| McCarthy Law Group
When it comes to web-scraping legal issues, people want easy answers. They want to know if web scraping is legal or it isn’t. Unfortunately, the truth is rarely as simple as that. The reason is two-fold: First, context always matters in web scraping. The nuances of when, where, what, and how you’re scraping matter in ... Read More| McCarthy Law Group
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EU Data Act Goes Live in Two Months; Learn Whether It Applies to You and What You Need to Do to Comply| McCarthy Law Group
Plenty of people have written about whether AI is going to replace lawyers. Leaving that question aside, not enough people have focused on the way widespread use of AI is going be used as evidence in legal proceedings. Throughout modern times, when people had legal questions, they asked lawyers. And if they formed an attorney-client ... Read More| McCarthy Law Group
I was recently in a high-stakes negotiation with a skilled negotiator. At the outset of the negotiation, he performed a few small gestures that made the parties feel comfortable with one another, and then he began his negotiation with a request: He asked us “to assume positive intent.” I smiled and nodded. It’s a nice ... Read More| McCarthy Law Group
Automation is everywhere. From robotic process automation (RPA) to AI-driven decision-making, businesses are integrating automation into their decision-making processes like never before. However, with these advancements come critical legal considerations that companies must address or face the wrath regulators—or worse, plaintiffs’ lawyers! One general principle that businesses should understand is that automation will usually be ... Read More| McCarthy Law Group
Probably around half of all internet traffic comes from bots or scraping. Despite that fact, there isn’t much guidance out there for how to comply with privacy laws when scraping. Notably, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) impose strict compliance requirements on companies collecting, storing, and processing user ... Read More| McCarthy Law Group
Is Web Scraping Legal? A 2025 Breakdown of What you Need to Know| McCarthy Law Group
In August 2023, I wrote a blog post that was unusual for me. Rather than cover a case or a particular legal issue, I wrote a long rant about hypocrisy in the legal world of web scraping. It became perhaps the most popular thing I have ever written. To this day, it is one of ... Read More| McCarthy Law Group
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Online contracts are a farce. Everyone knows they’re a farce. But every year, more areas of the law are consumed by the law of online contracts. — In 2011, Marc Andreesen wrote a landmark blog post called, “Why software is eating the world.” It was so prescient that the phrase is now embedded in the ... Read More| McCarthy Law Group
One of the more common refrains I hear from clients is the phrase “I want to limit my liability to the maximum extent possible.” And I think most lawyers are thrilled when they hear this, because it means the client is risk averse and wants legal services. But the expression always gives me pause. I ... Read More| McCarthy Law Group
Date of Last Update: April 25, 2022 TL;DR This is a long article (nearly 13,000 words!) about a complicated subject. It provides substantial amounts of historical context and legal analysis. You might not care about any of that. But you can read the bolded sections and the infographics, and you’ll get gist of it. One ... Read More| McCarthy Law Group