Question 1

Is anything AIScrapeSafe returns legal advice?

Accepted Answer

Correct — nothing AIScrapeSafe returns is legal advice. It reports detected signals and published rules to help you make an informed decision; consult counsel for legal conclusions.

Question 2

Is AIScrapeSafe legal advice?

Accepted Answer

No. AIScrapeSafe verdicts reflect the machine-readable and expressed restrictions detected on a source plus published rules. They are not legal advice — actual rights depend on your jurisdiction and intended use.

Question 3

ToS vs robots.txt vs license: which one wins?

Accepted Answer

They answer different questions, so AIScrapeSafe applies strict-wins: robots.txt governs crawler access, a license or rights reservation governs reuse and mining, and terms can add contractual limits. If they conflict, the most restrictive applicable signal sets the verdict: a robots.txt "allow" never overrides a license that forbids the use.

Question 4

Is government content public domain?

Accepted Answer

U.S. federal government works (e.g. NASA, NIST, .mil) are public domain under 17 USC 105. State .gov domains vary by open-data posture, and unofficial translations of laws are derivative works with their own copyright — AIScrapeSafe distinguishes these.

Question 5

How do I collect web data legally?

Accepted Answer

Start by checking what each source allows (robots.txt, terms, license, and any rights reservation) and record it; prefer official APIs or licensed and open data where they exist; avoid personal data you don't have a basis to collect. AIScrapeSafe runs those checks and registers the evidence so "we collected it legally" is documented. Not legal advice.

Question 6

Are public-website scraping laws different by jurisdiction?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Scraping sits at the intersection of contract, copyright, database, and privacy law, and all of those differ by country and sometimes by state. The same collection can be fine in one jurisdiction and exposed in another, which is why AIScrapeSafe lets you set jurisdiction context. This is general information, not legal advice.

Question 7

Is it legal to scrape a website against its Terms of Service?

Accepted Answer

Scraping against a site's Terms of Service isn't automatically a crime, but it can breach a contract you agreed to, and that exposure depends on how the terms were presented and your jurisdiction. Courts have split on it. The safe posture is to detect whether a site asserts contractual scraping limits and record what you found before you proceed. Not legal advice.

Question 8

What are the legal risks of web scraping?

Accepted Answer

The main ones: breach of a site's terms, copyright or database-right infringement on what you extract, and privacy-law exposure if you collect personal data. The technical act of fetching is rarely the issue; what you collect and how you use it usually is. AIScrapeSafe maps these signals per source so the risk is visible, not guessed. Not legal advice.

Question 9

Has a court ruled on ToS-based scraping?

Accepted Answer

Yes, several, and they don't all point the same way. US cases have generally treated scraping public pages as not a computer-fraud violation, while contract and copyright claims have succeeded separately, and outcomes vary by facts and jurisdiction. Treat any single ruling as fact-specific, not a green light. This is general information, not legal advice.

Question 10

Does AIScrapeSafe replace my legal counsel?

Accepted Answer

No - it augments them. It clears the high-volume, straightforward cases and escalates the ambiguous ones (low confidence) to counsel with a full evidence dossier attached, so lawyers spend time on real judgment calls instead of thousands of URLs.

Question 11

How does AIScrapeSafe handle different jurisdictions (EU vs US)?

Accepted Answer

Jurisdiction is a parameter on every query. Under EU, it applies the Article 4 TDM exception - TDM is allowed for any purpose if the content was lawfully accessed and rights were not reserved in a machine-readable way. Under US fair use, which is hard to automate, it defaults to a stricter reading of explicit permissions.

Legal, jurisdiction & scope