Don’t know if I’m asking the question in the right place, but could someone clarify a point in Vercel TOS? Section 5.15 prohibits the use of Vercel services for scraping.
I wanted to ask, whether downloading a file (approx. 4 mb) automatically once in a day from a same site (file updates daily and is needed for a football stats app i try to build) would fall under Vercel definition of scraping.
P.S. I submitted this question to Vercel Safety Support Team before via email, but was recommended looking at TOS (maybe, it was an autoresponse).
I fully understand it, but maybe there is a definiton of fair usage, regarding recurrent downloading of a single small file which is keystone to the app I try to build? I really want to know it, so I won’t break any rules of this community.
Thanks for reaching out to ask such a question. Before I proceed, I’d say that I’m not a legal advisor neither for the website in question nor from Vercel’s legal team.
Here’s my take:
Is the website you are going be downloading the file from aware of your actions? I mean if it’s a repository of some sorts that allows open usage of it’s data then by all means go ahead and implement that use case. Web scraping is usually considered bad when it’s done illegally or for malicious purpose.
So my advice is to contact the service you’ll be downloading the file from and they allow such usage.
Because the answer to whether you can do it on Vercel will largely depend on that.
As far as fair usage: downloading a single small file every day isn’t against fair use, unless you are selling the information or using it to commercialize your project on Vercel.