Why Anti-Circumvention Laws Are Choking Research Tools

The DMCA and similar laws designed to protect copyrighted content now block legitimate researchers and journalists from using web scraping, data mining, and analysis tools—even when accessing publicly available information. The legal cost of knowledge access rises as the volume of public data explodes, effectively gatekeeping research methods to well-funded institutions and commercial players who can afford lawyers, while independent investigations and academic work lack the technical infrastructure they need.