Amazon's CFAA Case Against Perplexity Defines AI Agent Access Rights
Source: Search Engine Journal
Amazon is using the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act—a 1986 statute written before web scraping existed—to argue that unauthorized AI crawler traffic constitutes criminal trespass. If successful, it could force AI companies to negotiate data access rather than assume it's free. The case will determine whether Terms of Service violations trigger federal liability or whether companies must pursue narrower contractual remedies. The outcome directly affects the economics of AI training and the viability of search competitors that depend on real-time web indexing without explicit permission.