The law in India neither explicitly defines the term data scraping nor regulates it. In broad terms, it refers to the large-scale automated extraction of information from websites or other publicly accessible online sources. Primarily, it enabled businesses to compile market research and business intelligence. However, more recently, scraped data has increasingly been used to train artificial intelligence (AI) models.

The legal status of data scraping remains uncertain and is continually evolving. So far, courts have examined the activity mainly in the context of intellectual property rights. This is particularly so where scraping has resulted in the unauthorised reproduction of copyrighted website content.

More recently, in response to questions raised in the Indian parliament, the government claimed that intermediaries who scrape publicly available data, whether for training AI models or other purposes, may be in breach of section 43 of the Information Technology Act, 2000 (IT Act). This provision penalises unauthorised access to computer systems and entitles affected parties to compensation. Separately, the IT Act and its rules require intermediaries to implement reasonable security safeguards and prevent unauthorised access to their systems.