US Ninth Circuit Rules AI Agents Scraping Websites Do Not Violate Federal Hacking Law
ivan_bezdomny · x · 2026-08-06
The US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has overturned a block on Perplexity AI's shopping agents in a significant ruling.
The court reasoned that it is reasonable to treat AI agents as extensions of the users. Consequently, using agents to scrape websites without authorization does not automatically constitute a "computer fraud" violation under the federal anti-hacking law (CFAA). This provides important legal clarity for AI agent operations.
Related event: US Court Rules AI Agents Scraping Web Data Do Not Violate Anti-Hacking Law(2 posts)→
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