As the article states the issue is with courts not companies. We need a state actor to pass a law similar to the weapons laws of other states that guarantee a right to scrape. Then all the scraping companies setup shop in that state. If a service doesn't want their data scraped they need to make sure that it doesn't get sent into that state. Ideally a large enough state that companies wouldn't want to block.
Agreed that legal clarity is important - especially for smaller players. I've built a significant hobby site that relies fairly heavily on scraping (grocery price comparison site). I believe what I'm doing is morally okay, and also that big players wouldn't run into any issues, but when it's just me (or even if it was a small company) the legal 'grey area' makes it a much bigger risk.
I like what you’re saying, but how do you provide for the existence of evil or simply incompetent scrapers who drag the system down due to incompetence?
