Legality and Ethics of Web Scraping Emergent Research Forum (ERF)

Automatic retrieval of data from the Web (often referred to as Web Scraping) for industry and academic research projects is becoming a common practice. A variety of tools and technologies have been developed to facilitate Web Scraping. Unfortunately, the legality and ethics of using these Web Scraping tools are often overlooked. This work in progress reviews legal literature together with Information Systems literature on ethics and privacy to identify broad areas of concern together with a list of specific questions that need to be addressed by researchers employing Web Scraping for data collection. Reflecting on these questions and concerns can potentially help the researchers decrease the likelihood of ethical and legal controversies in their work. Further research is needed to refine the intricacies of legal and ethical issues surrounding Web Scraping and devise strategies and tactics that researchers can use for addressing these issues.