> Violating a website's ToS is hardly illegal, though.

Can you be more specific as to your claim? Not illegal in what sense(s)? And what is your basis for the claim?

I'm not a lawyer, but saying "violating a website's ToS is hardly illegal" is fraught advice.

While individuals may get some leeway when it comes to ToS violations (see [1] and [2]), I would expect companies scraping and/or extracting content would be treated differently.

[1]: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/07/court-violating-terms-...

[2]: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/03/court-violating-...

[3]: https://www.octoparse.com/blog/10-myths-about-web-scraping

[4]: https://www.law.com/newyorklawjournal/almID/1202610687621/?s...

The only way for it to be illegal is if they're breaking a law, but then it would be illegal regardless of what the ToS says.