It is different, precisely because the end result is not the same - one broadly benefits the public while the other doesn't.

Substitute almost any disruptive public service to see the issue with your line of reasoning. For example - you seem to think that [ bulldozing private property ] to "construct an emergency fire break" is somehow different than [ bulldozing private property ] for any other reason.

Never mind that the sort of scraping being objected to is actually harmful to service health while what the wayback machine does is almost entirely unnoticeable.

The minuscule traffic generated by the wayback machine, which serves to preserve the content for years to come, is completely incomparable to the scrapers that hammer every single href linked on a website.

You missed the XCancel flamewar yesterday. The consensus is we should be allowed to scrape data and bypass login walls if we dislike the site owner, or feel we are owed free access by arbitrary criteria, it's sort of an unwritten rule. Unless of course it's Google or Meta properties we're talking about because that might impact RSUs.