X Corp, founded by Elon Musk, has filed a lawsuit seeking $1 million in damages over alleged data scraping from Twitter. The company claims that the actions of four unidentified individuals have harmed the functionality and reputation of Twitter. X Corp has requested a trial to determine the extent of the damages incurred.

While the lawsuit has been filed, it may face challenges due to the difficulties in identifying and prosecuting the alleged scrapers. Without knowing the identities of the individuals involved, it could be challenging to take appropriate legal action against them. The lawsuit also states that the damages sought will include the disgorgement of the defendants’ profits from the scraping. According to a report by Market Research Future, the web scraping industry is projected to exceed a billion dollars by 2030. Proving the illegality of the scraping without knowledge of the identities could present obstacles for X Corp.

It is important to note that web scraping of public data is not technically illegal. The U.S. Ninth Circuit of Appeals confirmed this in April 2022, as reported by TechCrunch. The majority of the data targeted by the scrapers in this case was publicly available Twitter data, which includes posts and user bios. Since this does not violate the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, it may be difficult for X Corp to establish the illegality of the scraping. The lawsuit is expected to undergo a lengthy legal process before a resolution is reached in the District Court of Dallas County.

To access the full lawsuit document, it can be found on Document Cloud here.