It is a gray area (in the US) in the sense that there is no clear consensus about it in the courts. There have been court rulings in both directions.
That's why I think it's still a gray area. But I could be wrong -- I haven't been following this stuff all that closely.
You don’t need consensus to allow something, you need consensus to be against something, otherwise it’s allowed.
This “scraping is Grey” sounds like FUD to me. Legally, you can scrape anything publicly available as long as you damage the server. You understand that google is just a giant web scraper right?
And all the other search engines spidering the web. Do you think they are risking their business being in the “grey?”
"Only three claims remained for the final order - the violation of the CAN-SPAM Act, violation of the CFAA and California Penal Code.
The district court then granted summary judgment to Facebook on all three of the remaining Facebook claims. The district court awarded statutory damages of $3,031,350"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook,_Inc._v._Power_Ventur....
I think there’s no grey area for whether scraping publicly available data is legal as it is legal.