Scraping Websites?

[eductationlearn]

What is U.S. regulation and law in regards to "scraping websites". For example, if a website want to display stock quotes and/or bank rates, is that website permitted to use technology that will automatically go to yahoo finance website, parse and gather the information from that site, and then display on own site? Do you have reference links to those regulations.

Case in point: Can another website harvest the information found on this page: http://finance.yahoo.com/q/hp?s=AAPL&a=08&b=7&c=1984&d=00&e=14&f=2007&g=d

 

[eolaw]

Look for Legal or Terms of use at the website that you want to scrape. There are often very expresss contractual restrictions on the use of the information posted. Absent express prohibitions in the Terms of Use for the site, simply posting a link to that site from yours is generally Ok.