intellectual-property privacy european-union data-protection data-ownership
Is it legal if I collect and sell public data from Twitter?
<p>Let's assume that, technically i am able to collect the <strong>public</strong> information from Twitter (including user's profile and their tweets) from Twitter.</p>
<p>I am wondering, is it legal to sell this data?
How about if i wish to share it for free?</p>
<p>I live in Europe, but does the location of this service matter?</p>

<p><strong>The second inferred question is &quot;How does Twitter conform to GDPR?&quot;</strong></p>
<p>See the <a href="https://gdpr.twitter.com/en/faq.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Twitter GDPR FAQ</a> for details on if Twitter is a data controller or a data processor, how Twitter complies with the legal requirements for transferring data, etc.</p>
<p><strong>Re: the original question regarding scraping and distributing Twitter data:</strong></p>
<p>Read Twitter's <a href="https://twitter.com/en/tos" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Twitter Terms of Service</a>, which is a legally binding contract for use of their service. By using Twitter (or accessing Twitter without an account), you agree to that contract.</p>
<p>Twitter very clearly states what they allow as legal uses of their service; pertaining to scraping and selling and/or sharing data:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>You also agree not to misuse our Services, for example, by... (iii)
access or search or attempt to access or search the Services by any
means (automated or otherwise) other than through our currently
available, published interfaces that are provided by Twitter (and only
pursuant to the applicable terms and conditions), unless you have been
specifically allowed to do so in a separate agreement with Twitter
(NOTE: crawling the Services is permissible if done in accordance with
the provisions of the robots.txt file, however, scraping the Services
without the prior consent of Twitter is expressly prohibited);</p>
<p>...</p>
<p>If you want to reproduce, modify, create derivative works, distribute,
sell, transfer, publicly display, publicly perform, transmit, or
otherwise use the Services or Content on the Services, you must use
the interfaces and instructions we provide, except as permitted
through the Twitter Services, these Terms, or the terms provided for
(developers)</p>
</blockquote>
<p>So you can scrape Twitter with prior consent, or scrape according to the robots.txt file, which shows Twitter's limits on what you can scrape. If you don't follow the TOS, you risk Twitter taking legal (civil, possibly criminal, according to jurisdiction) action against you.</p>
