EasiMachines / Legal
EasiMachines is operated by Easi Machines Pvt. Ltd. (Bengaluru, India) and EasiMachines Inc. (Delaware, USA).
Effective Date: 1 April 2026 · Version 1.0
EasiMachines uses automated data collection ("web scraping") to power market intelligence and AI valuation features. This policy explains our approach, the legal basis for our practices, and how dealers, auction houses, and website operators can control whether their data is collected.
Our approach is informed by legal precedent, including the Alan Ross Machinery Corp. v. Machinio Corp. case (N.D. Ill.), UK Database Right law, the UK Computer Misuse Act 1990, and applicable GDPR obligations.
To power our AI Valuation and market intelligence features, EasiMachines needs access to real-world equipment pricing data and specifications. We collect this data from three sources, in order of preference:
Tier 1 — Consented Partnerships (Preferred)
Direct data feed agreements with dealers and auction houses. Cleanest legal basis, highest data quality. Dealers who sign our Dealer Data Agreement receive free or discounted access during onboarding.
Tier 2 — Attributed Crawl with Opt-Out
Public inventory from dealer websites and auction result pages, displayed as unclaimed listings with full attribution, direct linking to source, and immediate opt-out available. Robots.txt strictly respected.
Tier 3 — Licensed Data Feeds
Commercially licensed pricing data from providers such as EquipmentWatch, Sandhills IronGuides, and similar market data services.
EasiMachines' crawler operations are governed by a 7-layer compliance framework designed to minimise legal risk and respect the rights of website operators:
Before accessing any domain, our crawler checks and fully respects the robots.txt file. If a domain disallows crawling via robots.txt for any user agent (or specifically for our EasiMachinesBot user agent), we do not crawl that domain. We log all robots.txt responses and retain those logs as documentation of our intent to comply.
If Disallow: / appears, we stop. No exceptions.
We collect only data that is visible to any ordinary web visitor without authentication. We do not access password-protected inventory portals, dealer intranets, or any pages requiring account creation to view.
Equipment facts (make, model, year, hours, price, location) are not copyrightable. The Alan Ross case confirmed this.
Listings from unconsented crawls are displayed as "Unclaimed Listings" with the source dealer name, a direct link back to the original listing on the dealer's website, and a prominent "Claim this listing" CTA. Enquiries on unclaimed listings go directly to the dealer's website — we do not intercept leads from unclaimed content.
This removes unjust enrichment risk (we are helping the dealer reach buyers) and eliminates any basis for a tortious interference claim.
During the unclaimed phase, we do not copy or host equipment images on EasiMachines servers. We may display a thumbnail via deep-link/hotlink to the original page, with attribution. Images are only hosted on EasiMachines servers after a dealer has claimed their listing and explicitly consented.
This eliminates copyright infringement exposure on visual assets entirely during the pre-consent phase.
Before crawling any significant dealer's website, we send a proactive notice email explaining what we are doing, why it benefits them (free SEO referral traffic), and how to opt out or claim. We maintain a public opt-out page at easimachines.com/remove-listing where any dealer can request removal within 24 hours.
All outreach dates, responses, and opt-outs are logged. This is the opposite of what Machinio did with Alan Ross — Machinio scraped after being told not to.
Our crawler operates at no more than 1 request per 3–5 seconds per domain, crawls during off-peak hours (overnight local time), and uses a clearly identified user agent string: EasiMachinesBot/1.0 (+https://easimachines.com/crawler). This allows webmasters to identify our bot and block it via robots.txt.
Aggressive scraping that causes server load could support a CFAA "damage" claim. We prevent this by design.
Our crawler targets commercial equipment dealers (limited companies, registered businesses) rather than private individuals. We do not scrape private seller phone numbers or email addresses from any third-party source. Where dealer contact information appears in listings, it is publicly displayed commercial contact information, not personal data in the GDPR sense.
UK-registered businesses' trading information is not personal data under UK GDPR. Sole traders' personal details require more care and we exclude them.
EasiMachines operates globally. Our scraping practices must comply with multiple legal frameworks:
| Jurisdiction | Relevant Law | Our Position | Mitigation |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🇺🇸 USA | Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA); Lanham Act | Alan Ross v. Machinio: scraping publicly accessible data is not CFAA "damage"; factual machine specs not trademark-protectable | Robots.txt compliance; no login bypass; factual data only |
| 🇬🇧 UK | Computer Misuse Act 1990; UK Database Right; UK GDPR | Database Right can protect collections even if individual records are unprotectable. CMA applies only to unauthorised system access. | Extract ≤50–100 listings per source (not full database); robots.txt compliance; no personal data of individuals |
| 🇪🇺 EU | EU Database Directive (98/9/EC); GDPR | Substantial extraction of a database can infringe sui generis database right regardless of copyright in individual entries. | Same as UK: extract reasonable subsets; focus on commercial entities; no personal data |
| 🇮🇳 India | IT Act 2000; DPDP Act 2023 | Unauthorised access to protected systems is an offence. DPDP limits processing of personal data. | Public data only; no authenticated access; commercial entity data focus; DPDP compliance |
If you are a dealer or website operator
If you do not want EasiMachines to collect data from your website or display your equipment listings, you have three options:
User-agent: EasiMachinesBot followed by Disallow: / — we will stop crawling within 24 hours of our next robots.txt check.For data removal requests, scraping concerns, legal notices relating to our data collection practices, or to discuss a data partnership or feed agreement:
Removal, legal & IP notices: legal@easimachines.com
Partnerships & general: hello@easimachines.com
Our crawler user agent: EasiMachinesBot/1.0 (+https://easimachines.com/crawler)
Note: EasiMachines recommends that all parties operating web scraping infrastructure in the UK obtain a review from a UK-qualified solicitor with IP/technology experience before deploying crawlers. This policy reflects our internal framework but does not constitute legal advice.