Web scraping — the automated harvesting of data from websites — powers everything from search engines and price trackers to the massive datasets behind generative AI. As AI models hunger for training data, scraping has shifted from a quiet technical practice to a loud legal battleground, with publishers, platforms, and data companies squarring off over who owns the web's raw material. Recent clashes show the stakes. Google has sued SerpApi for scraping search results at scale — echoing Reddit's similar suit — while SerpApi's bid to dismiss argues search results aren't copyrightable at all. Meanwhile, Meta quietly deleted terms-of-service language that had stoked scraping concerns, even as its new commercial terms, effective October 30, appear to permit scraping websites "associated" with businesses on its platforms — including news publishers — potentially overriding robots.txt blocks. For businesses, the message is clear: treat your data perimeter as a strategic asset. Audit platform terms, reinforce technical defenses, and watch the SerpApi ruling — it could redraw the legal map. For data firms and AI developers, licensing deals and transparent crawl practices may become the price of admission.