alt Hacker NewsWe do not in fact live in that world. It is not illegal to violate the terms of service of a website.
A website can block Xyz user agent, put Xyz in robots.txt, or even put "No using Xyz!" in a popup and you cannot be prosecuted for using Xyz. It might be hard for you to evade their requirements, but it's not illegal.
Whether or not it's wrong is a matter of opinion. Yours differs from mine, that's fine.
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BizarroLand • today at 5:00 PM
Wrong != Illegal
It is wrong to pretend you are deaf to get out of an awkward conversation. No one is going to put cuffs on you for that.
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It is illegal to download copyrighted material from a website and make copies of it in violation of its licence.
I can’t go scrape New York Times articles and make copies of them without first licensing them from NYT.