Webinar: Good vs. Bad Scraping: Protecting Critical Research Activities While Combating Unauthorized Scraping

Event Date/Time: Tuesday, December 5th, 2023 10:00-11:00 a.m. PT/1:00 – 2:00 PM ET For researchers seeking to better understand platform abuses, such as mis- and dis-information and online extremism, web scraping can be an important tool for studying threat actors' tactics and understanding patterns and trends of platform activity. The Mitigating Unauthorized Scraping Alliance (MUSA), which brings together leading companies and experts in a unified front against unauthorized data scraping, and the CITRIS and the Banatao Institute, hosted a joint webinar to dive into exploring "good" vs. "bad" web scraping applications. In this webinar, David and Dr. Nonnecke examined safeguards necessary to prevent privacy risks; explored key definitional questions to improve shared understanding of "good" vs. "bad" scraping activities; and discussed areas of collaboration for researchers, industry, and regulators to enable researchers to examine key questions for tech and society while ensuring websites and platforms maintain essential user protections. Speaker and Moderator: David Patariu, Associate, Venable LLP; Privacy Law Specialist (PLS); IAPP Fellow of Information Privacy, CIPP/US, CIPP/E, CIPM Dr. Brandie Nonnecke, Director, CITRIS Policy Lab; Associate Research Professor at the Goldman School of Public Policy, UC Berkeley