Webbots, Spiders, and Screen Scrapers - Michael Schrenk [121]
To better understand trespass to chattels, consider the spider developed by a company called Bidder's Edge, which cataloged auctions on eBay. This centralized spider collected information about auctions in an effort to aggregate the contents of several auction sites, including eBay, into one convenient website. In order to collect information on all eBay auctions, it downloaded as many as 100,000 pages a day.
To put the impact of Bidder's Edge spider into context, assume that a typical eBay web page is about 250KB in size. If the spider requested 100,000 pages a day, the spider would consume 25GB of eBay's bandwidth every day, or 775GB each month. In response to the increased web traffic, eBay was forced to add servers and upgrade its network.
With this amount of requests coming from Bidder's Edge spiders, it was easy for eBay to identify the source of the increased server load. Initially, eBay claimed that Bidder's Edge illegally used its copyrighted auctions. When that argument proved unsuccessful, eBay pursued a trespass-to-chattels case.[89] In this case, eBay successfully argued that the Bidder's Edge spider increased the load on its servers to the point that it interfered with the use of the site. eBay also claimed a loss due to the need to upgrade its servers to facilitate the increased network traffic caused by the Bidder's Edge spider. Bidder's Edge eventually settled with eBay out of court, but only after it was forced offline and agreed to change its business plan.
How do you avoid claims of trespass to chattels? You can start by not placing an undue load on a target server. If the information is available from a number of sources, you might target multiple servers instead of relying on a single source. If the information is only available from a single source, it is best to limit downloads to the absolute minimum number of pages to do the job. If that doesn't work, you should evaluate whether the risk of a lawsuit outweighs the opportunities created by your webbot. You should also ensure that your webbot or spider does not cause damage to a business or individual.
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[89] You can find more information about this case at http://pub.bna.com/lw/21200.htm. Googling eBay, Inc. v. Bidder's Edge will also provide links to comments about the succession of rulings on this case.
Internet Law
While the laws protecting physical property are long established and reinforced by considerable numbers of court rulings, the laws governing virtual property and virtual behavior are less mature and constantly evolving. While one would think the same laws should protect both online and offline property, the reality is that most laws were written before the Internet and don't directly address those things that are unique to it, like email, frames, hyperlinks, or blogs. Since many existing laws do not specifically address the Internet, the application of the law (as it applies to the Internet) is open to much interpretation.
One example of a law to deal specifically with Internet abuse is Virginia's so-called Anti-Spam Law.[90] This law is a response to the large amount of server resources consumed by servicing unwanted email. The law attacks spammers indirectly by declaring it a felony to falsify or forge email addresses in connection to unsolicited email. It also provides penalties of as much as $10.00 per unsolicited email or $25,000 per day. Laws like this one are required to address specific Internet-related concerns. Well-defined rules, like those imposed by Virginia's Anti-Spam Law, are frequently difficult to derive from existing statutes. And while it may be possible to prosecute a spammer with laws drafted before the popularity of the Internet, less is open to the court's interpretation when the law deals specifically with the offense.
When contemplating the laws that apply to you as a webbot developer, consider the following:
Webbots and spiders add a wrinkle to the way online information is used, as most web pages are intended to be used with manually operated browsers. For example,