[darklajid]

I know this is not a position people over here like to support, but..

  But this technique, known as "scraping," is surprisingly common among
  technologically sophisticated users and has a number of legitimate
  applications.

  To get a list of sex offenders, Poulsen wrote an automated program to search the
  Department of Justice Web site for each zip code
  in the United States and then save the name and
  address of each registered sex offender in that
  zip code to a file.

Really? Really? That's a 'legitimate application'? Nevermind that the pure existence of that registry is a slap in the face for people with my understanding of Freedom and Liberty (in caps), scraping _that list_ is why we want to protect scraping? I haven't felt that disconnected to content on this site for a long time.

  Yet most people would agree that Poulsen's actions
  were a legitimate journalistic project. So we might
  want to be careful about subjecting this kind of
  technique to criminal penalties.

Most people?? In what world?

I'm sorry for the detour, but the whole article is trying to defend weev while linking to atrocious actions of that guy in the past and coming up with the most despicable (Thanks Hollywood, learned a new term) reason for scraping _ever_. Disgusting.