Is it illegal (under US law) to &quot;manually&quot; mass download from JSTOR?
<p>Say I wish to determine the frequency of the use of the word "apple" in academic articles. And so I want to get as many academic articles as possible for analysis.</p>

<p>I have access (through my university) to JSTOR. Using my personal computer and my internet access from home, I "manually" (i.e. without any script or bot or tricks) download as many articles as I can everyday. </p>

<p>Let's say I can download 1,000 a day. I do this for a few years until I have 1 million articles from JSTOR.</p>

<p>This <em>might</em> violate JSTOR's T&amp;C, but would I have done anything illegal under US law?</p>

<p>Probably, yes.</p>

<p>By violating your T&amp;C you have "exceeded your authorised access on a protected computer" which is a crime under the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Fraud_and_Abuse_Act" rel="nofollow">CFAA</a>.</p>

cfaa