[sangnoir]

We likely are in agreement - isn't a rule against hammering a server 'a legal limit on the kind of behaviour to a publicly accessible system'? I was disagreeing with parent who said:

> there shouldn't be legal limits on that kind of behaviour to a publicly accessible system anyways.

[Dylan16807]

The difference between "limit on that kind of behavior" and "limit on the kind of behavior" is critical.

A limit on red cars is a limit on "the color" of cars, but it's not a limit on "that color" when someone is pointing at a blue car.

So when "that kind" refers to sanely-implemented scraping, then there should not be a limit. There is a limit on "the kind", to restrict it to activities like scraping that aren't inherently harmful.

[sangnoir]

Unfortunately english isn't very precise: it's difficult to parse what MichaelGG was referring to by 'that'. I assumed he was referring to scraping (his previous sentence), but it's also possible he was referring to the CL case.

For the record, I maintain my belief that there should be a law that applies to scraping of publicly available sites.

> You wanna sue a business for scraping your site? Hey, fine, that's a civil business issue. (And really, there shouldn't be legal limits on that kind of behaviour to a publicly accessible system anyways