anti-scraping: If somebody were to offer a telephone book database online and you created a copy of that to sell on your own, you'd almost certainly loose in the EU (since unlike in the US, databases as pure collections of facts have their own copyright protections)
The legally safest locations probably are outside the western world if you are targeting western sites.
Every case I've seen wrt Ryanair (they sue a lot of people) has resulted in a win for Ryanair. Do you have details on the case you're describing?
>anti-scraping: [...]
Scraping purely factual data is one of my points of defense in the US. I don't want to give it away.
>It's still risky though, the safest locations probably are outside the western world if you are targeting western sites.
Yeah, this was ultimately the conclusion I had to come to. However, outside the West, the Western companies will just send someone with a briefcase full of $100 bills and pay them off. Corrupt government officials in these locations want the goodwill of a big American company a lot more than they care about any particular random guy.
There is only one workable solution: run the service totally anonymously and maintain good opsec so that your cover isn't blown. All under the table. This has its own issues, like making it difficult to receive payment and putting one at much greater legal risk than a mere CFAA dispute, but it's the only option if you don't plan to get shut down.
I edited my original comment to reflect that.
Also, since this is somewhat untouched territory, don't be so sure that you'll get a judge who is as well-versed in web scarping and infrastructure as you, or shares your opinions on the subject. (And given that precedents are so important in US laws, you better hope someone else before you didn't get such a judge.)
I’d assume a lot of HN users are from such locales.
We don’t always have to assume US laws apply globally – they don’t.