AI Scraping: Google & Reddit's Legal Battle Heats Up

Google and Reddit are locked in a legal struggle against AI bots scraping their platforms, with both facing significant legal challenges.

Last week, Google experienced a major court loss concerning its lawsuit against SerpApi, a web scraper accused of circumventing anti-scraping technology. Google's legal team invoked the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), a move Meredith Rose of Public Knowledge described as "bizarre" and "not what the law had contemplated."

Reddit filed a similar lawsuit in October, accusing SerpApi and Perplexity of scraping content that appears in Google search results. Both tech giants cite the rise of AI scraping as a threat to copyright holders' control over their content and their ability to monetize it.

However, a judge recently dismissed Google's lawsuit early, ruling that Google lacked DMCA standing as it did not own the content scraped and was not acting on behalf of rights holders. This decision does not bode well for Reddit's ongoing case, as it faces similar standing issues.

SerpApi argues that Google and Reddit are attempting to "wall off the open Internet" by using the DMCA to control content they do not own. The company views this fight as crucial for defending the open web, which is experiencing a "re-enclosure" due to widespread reactions against scraping.

Google plans to amend its complaint, focusing on "knowledge panels" that may contain licensed copyrighted material. Experts caution this could lead to further legal complications if Google is found to be reproducing unlicensed content. The outcome of these cases remains uncertain, with potential implications for public data access.