{"id":46340257,"user":"layer8","time":1766269850,"time_ago":"4 days ago","type":"comment","content":"

Completely illegal.","comments":[{"id":46340393,"user":"sneak","time":1766270969,"time_ago":"4 days ago","type":"comment","content":"

The metadata scrape might not be.","comments":[{"id":46340569,"user":"layer8","time":1766272261,"time_ago":"4 days ago","type":"comment","content":"

Pretty sure any kind of scraping violates Spotify’s ToS.","comments":[{"id":46341461,"user":"sneak","time":1766281162,"time_ago":"4 days ago","type":"comment","content":"

ToS is not law except in the most draconian and authoritarian interpretations of the CFAA.","comments":[{"id":46341535,"user":"layer8","time":1766281903,"time_ago":"4 days ago","type":"comment","content":"

You are mistaken, it’s contract law.","comments":[{"id":46344383,"user":"DannyBee","time":1766320456,"time_ago":"3 days ago","type":"comment","content":"

Lawyer here -

A bunch of things:

1. You are all probably talking past each other - I expect the original question of legality was about criminal, and not civil, law.

2. I'm sure they did not view or sign the TOS to access this. You can't be bound to a contract you never view or intentionally assent to. At least in most countries/places.

For example, in the US I can show you tons of cases in just about every state and federal court where the court decided the TOS doesn't apply because it was never viewed or assented to.

IE cases like https://cases.justia.com/federal/district-courts/nevada/nvdc...

(Ironically it works both ways, so if the contract provides you any guarantees, you can't take advantage of them to sue for breach if yuo never assented)

It's different if you can prove that they knew there was a TOS they would be bound by and just never bothered to look at the terms.

That is very hard to prove, and it does not suffice to prove that everybody has a TOS these days or whatever. You have to prove actual knowledge of a TOS by these particular defendants.

I use the US because it tends to be on the forefront of maximal browserwrap enforcement, so if it's not going to be enforced there, it's usually not going to be enforced anywhere","comments":[],"comments_count":0,"level":4,"url":"item?id=46344383"}],"comments_count":1,"level":3,"url":"item?id=46341535"}],"comments_count":2,"level":2,"url":"item?id=46341461"}],"comments_count":3,"level":1,"url":"item?id=46340569"}],"comments_count":4,"level":0,"url":"item?id=46340393"}],"comments_count":5,"url":"item?id=46340257"}

Comment by layer8