Data Scraping: California Court Finds Terms of Service Violated

A marketing intelligence company countersued a social network for blocking access to its network to prevent data scraping; however, it acknowledges that the social network’s terms of service prohibit the collection of data by automated means (the company self describes the automated nature of its product), the social network has a legitimate business purpose in preventing data scraping, and there is no injury to competition (the company’s competitors have access to the same content).