I wouldn't say completely split. I think most of HN considers the current state of scraping law to be complete and utter hogwash. Many of the expected consumer rights don't apply online because of the way the law considers normal communication with a server on the internet an excursion onto private property.

We need a modern law addressing these issues instead of the pre-Internet CFAA. Malicious actors should still be punished, and it may be reasonable to still allow a provision for the civil liability (not criminal) of large-scale accidental DoS from poorly-implemented scrapers, but users should be free to choose their own browsing devices -- even if those browsing devices are highly optimized to extract only the specific pieces of data that the user cares about.

This law should also clarify that normal communication over HTTP cannot be punished unless the plaintiff can demonstrate real and serious interruption to their services, that local RAM copies that are never externally transmitted cannot be considered infringing in themselves, that hosting a site on the internet grants an implied copyright license to read and access its content with any HTTP-capable client, and that browsewrap/clickwrap contracts are unenforceable unless the user undertakes a significant relationship with the company, among other things.

Are you trying to imply that's a ridiculous position? I don't see it as one.

I'll say it's a ridiculous position. How can it possibly be ethical? The owner of the server and the content has specifically told you to stop sending packets at it.

I honestly don't know how to construct an argument for this because it's so obvious to me.

It's ethical because it's a public internet. The same way you can't use the force of law to stop a homeless guy from asking you for change as you walk along a public street, you can't [shouldn't be able to] use force of law to stop a client from asking your server for data as it sits connected to a public network.

It's not unethical for a beggar to continue asking for change. It's up to the passerbys to choose whether or not they'll honor his request, but he is free to make it as long as he doesn't get out of control. Many people see the client-server relationship that exists online similarly. As the beggar can't receive anything that the giver doesn't willingly give, neither can the client receive anything the server doesn't willingly give.

It wouldn't make any sense if a guy could give the beggar change and then sue him and say that he shouldn't have gotten change because he actually wanted to use it for his lunch. The judge would say, "Well, why did you give it away? You can't just change your mind and then sue someone over it." This is also what judges should ask servers who dispense information to clients and then try to take it back.

tl;dr there's no harm in asking for data, even after someone has told you no, as long as you do so reasonably.

Strictly speaking there are a lot of places where panhandling is not legal.

Is it unethical to record a TV show and skip through the ads when you watch it if the network would prefer you didn't? If you agree that it is not unethical, then merely the "content owner's" (keep in mind many things people want to scrape are factual information) saying so is not sufficient to make it ethically impermissible to scrape.

In the context of this submission, it's definitely not polite.

It's certainly more considerate if you limit your scraping to rates similar to a human user instead of just going as fast as possible.